


Bono Fortuno

by SuedeScripture



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Colony Planet, Graphic Description of Corpses, Graphic Scenes of Sickness Famine and Death, Illness/injury, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mission Fic, Nerdy Literary Reference, Original Character Death(s), Post-Star Trek Beyond, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Predatory Animals, Slow Burn, Survival, Viral Disease, Wilderness Survival, descriptions of hunting and fishing, handwavey astronomy, references to Tarsus IV
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2020-03-20 11:28:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 61,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18991756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuedeScripture/pseuds/SuedeScripture
Summary: When a mission responding to a distress call goes awry, Jim Kirk and his first officer Spock find themselves in a situation they've never faced before—surviving completely alone on an alien planet, and possibly with no hope of rescue. In the months that follow, they learn more about each other than ever before.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first chaptered fic in Spirk fandom, and I'm nervous, so I hope you enjoy it!

“I wonder what it’ll be like out there, outside of our own galaxy,” Jim said, sitting back down with a second helping of bacon and chasing it with a sip of coffee. “I mean, we’re out this far, charting star systems no one’s even bothered to map yet.”

“It is unrealistic to expect charting to be done, Captain,” Spock responded, just as expected, “Not by the Federation. Our galaxy is estimated to be 105,700.083 light years in diameter. Given the location of the founding planets, it is unreasonable to expect charting beyond telescopic surveys. It is estimated we have charted only 24% of our galaxy to precise modern specifications thus far, and as technology continues to advance, entire sectors must be rechecked for accuracy. The Gamma and Delta Quadrants, as well as the portion of Beta under Klingon and Romulan control are still largely unknown to us—hence our current mission.”

Jim smiled, awaiting the inevitable _furthermore_. Spock never missed an opportunity to explain things he already knew. He just really liked to let his resident Vulcan stick his nose in the air and go.

“Furthermore,” Spock continued, “We have only reached the outskirts of Federation explored space, which remain closer to the galactic center than its estimated edge. We do not yet possess the technology to reach even the closest galaxy of Andromeda within our Local Group. Venturing outside of our own galaxy before we have explored it in entirety is not logical. I imagine it would be much like our current state of setting beacons and charting unknown star systems, which I recall just yesterday you stated was ‘supremely boring’.”

Eyes crinkling, Jim chuckled. Spock didn’t take him for an idiot, he knew that, but this variety of banter had become an amusing pastime over the years. He was pretty sure Spock got a kick out of it too. “Spock, Humans went into space before we’d even fully explored our own planet. They’re still pulling things out of the oceans that no one has ever seen.”

“Indeed. Humans have had a propensity for conducting research in a most illogical fashion throughout your history, Captain,” Spock replied, raising an eyebrow. “I confess I am not surprised.”

Grinning, Jim watched the line at the replicators congregate with stragglers looking for quick breakfasts before Alpha and those coming off of Gamma shift, ready for a meal and some downtime. Spock had lately been meeting Jim at his door to come down to the Officer’s Mess, hardly ever allowing him to linger and waste time that could be used productively elsewhere. He was neatly spooning up the remainder of the gruel he was eating, as if he timed meals to the minute. Probably to his exact daily nutritional requirements too.

“ _Bridge to Captain Kirk and Commander Spock_.”

“Go ahead,” Jim flipped open his communicator.

“ _We’ve picked up a distress call_ ,” the Gamma shift comms officer responded, “ _It’s pretty patchy, but we’ve triangulated it to a Federation colony planet about an hour and a half away at Warp Five._ ”

“There’s a colony way the hell out here?” Jim frowned across the table at Spock. They’d been on the ass-end of the Beta for weeks, having carefully navigated their way around the entire Klingon Empire to the unaffiliated and largely unexplored space on the other side. It had taken the better part of a year to get out here, with various stops surveying little known systems for intelligent life and resources, making two First Contacts, and dealing with a few weird anomalies along the way.

“Velarusa IV,” his First Officer replied, “The outermost Federation colony in the Beta quadrant.”

“Huh. Well, so much for star charting,” Jim shrugged, looking around at his bridge crew, the majority of them finishing up with their own breakfasts, and pinged the comm again, “Lay in a course, Lieutenant. Alpha’s on our way up.”

“ _Aye, Captain._ ”

Standing in unison, they deposited their trays in the recycler, Jim with his last strip of bacon in hand as they strode down the hall to the turbolifts. Once inside, he popped the last of it into his mouth and noticed Spock staring at him with that telltale Vulcan disapproval face of his.

“What?” he asked through his mouthful.

Spock said nothing, turning to face the doors.

 

About an hour later, the command team was assembled in the conference room just off the bridge.

“Mr. Spock, fill us in,” Jim gave his XO the floor.

“The distress signal received 1.28 hours ago originates from a Federation colony on Velarusa IV,” Spock keyed up the holographic display from the table panel to highlight the fourth planet in the system and the location of the colony on it. “Disenchanted with the fallout of Earth’s Nuclear War and inspired by the success of SS _Conestoga’s_ establishment of the Terra Nova colony ten years prior, followers of a Human entrepreneur-turned-politician by the name of Victor Huberto privately funded a generation-class starship launched in 2079, with the intent to begin a new life in the outer reaches of the known galaxy. In 2144, their children and grandchildren made berth on an M-class planet in the Velarus system, 642 lightyears from Sol, and established their colony, which they refer to colloquially as _Bono Fortuno_ , or Good Fortune. The colony’s population at its last known census stood at 8,956 Humans, descendants of the original 235 survivors of the journey.”

Uhura took over, bringing up the audio, “The distress signal we received is severely degraded, and so far, there’s been no response to our hails. As far as I can tell, the first part of the message is some evolution of Portuguese, Spanish and Esperanto, the rest is Standard. They talk about a virus that’s killing people in a matter of days, bleeding, not having the resources, some kind of wasting or famine…” She narrowed her eyes in concentration as the broken recording looped again— _e pronta venos oscuridão e furioz—_ “And something about darkness and fury… I have no idea what that’s in reference to. I’m sorry, Captain, that’s all I can make out.”

A collective pause silenced the room, until Dr. McCoy broke it.

“So you’re telling me these people took off from Earth almost 200 years ago at Warp Snail’s Pace before the Federation even existed, miraculously made it all the way _through_ the damn Romulan Star Empire without getting vaporized into oblivion, hit the first breathable rock they found and put down roots?” he gaped in disbelief. “Do they even have modern tech? What am I working with here?”

“The colony has been visited by Federation vessels twice since its establishment, in 2195 and 2217,” Spock said. “We can be certain they have received schematics and materials to upgrade their colony for more efficient energy usage, medical equipment, and other Federation technologies to within this century’s parameters.”

“That isn’t in line with colony protocol,” Uhura frowned, “All Fed colonies are supposed to be on mandatory ten year census and health checks, at least.”

“That is correct,” Spock agreed. “However, Federation Colony Policy 29 was not instituted until 2224. The lapse is a significant oversight.”

“Distance was probably a factor,” Sulu put in. “It took us ten months to get out here, and we have the fastest ship in the fleet. Not like we can take the direct route.”

Jim nodded. With two hostile empires in the way, and the debatable “neutral” territory between them sketchy at best and suicidal at worst to navigate; the long way around had been considered ideal.

“Fifty year old medical tech,” McCoy grumbled, “Might as well be the damn Dark Ages.”

“Fifty years is not so very long,” Chekov quipped. “How old are you, Doctor?”

“You shut up, kid,” said the doctor, “They won’t even have basic replicators for clothes and food, much less the kind we synthesize complex medical-grade compounds with.”

Spock raised an eyebrow, “I will remind you that you were able to heal me from significant injury with far older medical equipment 1.8 years ago.”

“A flesh wound,” McCoy spat back. “How do we even know who they are? Crazy people out here in Bumblefuck Beta Quad dying of an unknown space virus is bad enough, but how do we even know who we’re dealing with? Jim, how do we know they’re not some of Khan’s sort?”

Jim sent a glance around the table, watching the rest of his team all shift uncomfortably. Very few people dared speak that name in Spock’s presence, even years after the fact. Apparently it made him more ‘scarily Vulcan’ than he already was.

“A generation ship is not a sleeper ship, of which the SS _Botany Bay_ was the only known vessel, launched pre-warp and nearly a century prior to these colonists,” Spock answered in clipped tones. “Your logic is flawed, Dr. McCoy.”

“Yeah? And what about unknown vessels?” McCoy argued. “How do we know more copies of psychotic despots haven’t come through black holes and colonized the backwater hellholes out here?”

“There has been no further evidence of interdimensional travel beyond that of Nero and my counterpart by any Federation research stations currently assigned to singularities and other temporal-spatial anomalies; the probability of which my now endangered species takes a particular interest in monitoring throughout the galaxy.” 

Yep, there it was. For all his practiced impassivity, Spock had a way of enunciating his words while staring a person down until they stuck their tail between their legs. Bones stood up to it better than others, but even he winced at that.

“Furthermore, the likelihood of affiliation with Khan is statistically below 0.03 percent, based on the recorded history of the colony itself and information uncovered on 20th century Augments during the investigation of Khan and the disbanding of Section 31. Khan and his companions are currently held in stasis at an undisclosed secure facility—the continual operation of which I maintain a personal stake as a chair of its board, Doctor,” Spock stated with emphasis, before he returned his eyes to the display. “Velarusa IV is a Federation colony. It is our obligation to respond to citizens in distress. The colony’s manifesto proclaims a simple desire for peaceful existence on a planet untarnished by war and environmental exploitation. By all accounts, they have held to that creed.”

“Untarnished environments find ways to kill you anyway, don’t they?” McCoy growled, “A virus. Bleeding, they said, death within days… sounds like a hemorrhagic fever of some kind. We have vaccines for the ones originating on Fed planets; most have been wiped out since the 2190’s, but these idiots left known space before then. Could be something we’ve never seen, or they could have brought all hell with them out here. Viruses can lay dormant in a host for decades, and once reactivated, they mutate constantly to survive. In 200 years?” he shook his head with disgust, “It could be unrecognizable.”

“So we go down in full evo gear, treat it as a biohazard zone until we know otherwise,” Jim decided, putting an end to their pissing match, “This is a medical mission, Bones and I will take point. Assemble your team of medics, we’ll make a preliminary assessment and go from there.” He looked from his doctor to his XO. “Spock, pick a couple of science officers to take environmental samples, and some basic security for good measure. You’ll be in command up here. Alright, let’s do this.”

Back on the Bridge, the _Enterprise_ had assumed a standard orbit around the planet. It was a blue and white world, very Earth-like but possessing only two continents. Only one of those had a visible habitable zone, a sliver of green near the equatorial region, the rest covered in ice at the poles. It was orbited by two natural satellites, one moon large and round and the other small and lumpy, as well as the centuries-old generation ship itself, floating nearby like a sleeping leviathan, the words SS _Paradizio_ across its darkened hull.

“The ship is dead, sir,” said Chekov, “These first generation warp ships did not have theta-matrix compositors to regenerate the core. Once the supply of dilithium is fully decrystalized within the convertor assembly, the power is gone.”

“They drove it ’til they ran out of gas,” Jim mused, sitting in his chair. The very first warp ships only had a top speed of Warp Factor One, and even then, they couldn’t maintain it for long periods. It had taken this ship almost seven decades to travel a distance his own ship could have made in weeks, had they taken the same direct path.

“It looks like their signal bounced off the beacon we just set, which is how we managed to pick it up from where we were.” Uhura told him from her station, “But the signal origin on the colony is intermittent at best. They’re lucky anyone heard them out here, friendly or not.”

“Captain, the colony’s power grid appears to have malfunctioned. There is little electrical output from the city,” Spock said from the science station. “It may explain the interruptions in the distress signal.”

“Magnify on the settlement, 8,000 meters,” Jim ordered.

The screen switched views. It was not a large settlement, perhaps 10 kilometers across with cultivated land all around the outskirts. A few fires appeared to be burning inside of an easily discernible perimeter wall. He frowned, “Why isn’t their power working? What sort of anomalies are we dealing with here?” Jim had been through enough ion storms and weird signal-disrupting mineral deposits to make it a routine scan before beam-downs.

“Magnetic field interference is within normal range. Atmospheric and mineral composition of the planet and moons is also fairly benign. The source of the power outage is unclear,” Spock answered, highlighting areas on the display overlay from his console, “A solar manifold lies here, at the eastern edge of the city proper. However, it now functions as a back-up system. The primary system is hydroelectric. This cable runs from the colony approximately 1400 kilometers to a turbine installation, which makes use of the planet’s extreme tidal forces to generate energy with a hydroelectric station here, in the Bay of Tempestades. They should have ample power reserves, enough to power a settlement 25 times this size, but it appears neither are functioning.”

“Sir, life signs at the colony are… not good,” Chekov put in worriedly. “I am reading not very many Human life signs at all.”

“Uhura, where does the distress signal originate?” Jim asked.

She highlighted one of the buildings, “Here, sir.”

“We need to tackle their medical needs first. Let’s get down there,” Jim stood up with determination, clapping McCoy on the shoulder and nodding to Spock, “Keep investigating the power from up here, see if you can find the source of the disruptions.”

Unsurprisingly, his First Officer followed them to the turbolift doors, “Captain, I would submit a request for my—”

“Spock,” Jim turned back, well aware of what was coming. “Why is it that every time we go on an away mission together, you cite regulation, but every time I go down without you, you wanna come?”

He was met with Spock’s _I don’t want to admit I do that_ face. 

“That’s what I thought,” Jim said, “Hold down the fort for me. Hourly check-ins, the usual. You have the conn.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obligatory reminder to please read the tags. Some scenes in this chapter and the next may be disturbing, reader discretion is advised.

Suited up in evo skins and masks, the away team materialized in front of the main gates of the city. They were met with an eerie quiet, dark smoke billowing gently into otherwise pristine blue skies, the surrounding landscape still and rather tranquil. 

The colony city itself was contained within a thick perimeter wall, about ten meters high and three meters thick, and looked to be constructed of metal framing and stone, all cemented together. An arch above the open gates proclaimed, _Toto Benvindios Paz_ —All Welcome in Peace, if Jim had his translation right.

“A little weird that they’d need a wall like this if they leave the front door wide open in a crisis, don’t you think?” McCoy grumbled as they approached.

“Not everyone’s as cynical as you, Bones,” Jim countered, though privately he agreed. 

“Sir!” one of the medics pointed toward movement near the column of smoke inside of the walls; a man, gaunt and ragged, stumbling toward them, weakly lifting his arm in greeting. Bones took off, whipping out his tricorder with Jim following.

“I’m Captain Kirk of the Federation Starship _Enterprise_ ,” he said as they reached the man, “We’re here to help you.”

Pink trails leaked from his eyes as he shook his head, his face crumpling with grief, “Muito tardo. Estamos morti. Esta toto morti. Paz e lumo tu sancti.”

Beyond, Jim could now see what was burning; a long, shallow pit dug along the perimeter fence, piled with corpses—hundreds of them, variously charred or gently burning. The man weakly turned back to the handcart he’d been pushing, three more bodies draped inside.

“Dammit,” Bones muttered as the man stumbled to his knees, waving the tricorder, “Jim, I dunno what the hell this thing is, but his viral load is pretty high. He’s got maybe a day without some kind of treatment.”

“Are there other survivors?” Jim questioned the sick man. “Where is your hospital?”

He waved vaguely into the city, and Jim directed his security and science officers, “You guys scout ahead, scan for others. The rest of you, clear that cart, we’ll use it to bring him and any other people we find with us. We need to find anyone else still alive.” Jim drew on the few phrases Uhura had given him and his own vague knowledge of the old Terran languages from his Academy days. “What is your name? Nomo? Nomé?”

The man smiled, lips cracking and bleeding as the medics gently lifted and placed him into the cart, “Mi não nomo. Mio morti.”

“No you’re not, man, not yet,” Jim clasped the man’s bony shoulder. “What’s your name?”

“Jorgé.”

“Jorgé,” he smiled softly, “That’s a good name. Bono nomo, Jorgé. I’m Jim. Jim Kirk.”

They spread out in teams of twos and threes, tricorders scanning with an urgency. It had once been a beautiful place, with tended gardens, statuary and fountains, buildings of brightly painted adobe and timbers with clay-tiled roofs, harkening to the old styles of Earth. The perimeter wall was decorated with colorful murals and mosaics of happy, smiling people and pleasant pastoral scenes. Most of the buildings were no taller than the fence, which was lined at the top with what looked like huge light fixtures, all pointing upward and outward from the city. Each building was also topped with lights, globes or festive strings of them, though of course, none were illuminated with the power matrix on the fritz.

But as they pressed farther in, there was evidence that all was far from well; windows were smashed, vehicles haphazardly left, some crashed or leaking fluids, overturned and parts scattered. Houses were charred and smoking, doors marked with red paint or scraps of red cloth. And there were more bodies in various states of decomposition sprawled in the streets, others tucked into corners, some of them clutching wilted flowers and each other.

“My god,” McCoy muttered, “What the hell happened out here? Rioting? I thought Spock said they were peaceful.”

“Fear changes people, Bones,” Jim answered quietly.

They pressed onward, coaxing directions from Jorgé as they searched for others, their scanners leading them to two people barely clinging to life in broken houses along the way, McCoy and the medics doing what they could to stabilize them on the go. The people in the cart were skin and bones, and if the illness was so fast-moving, they’d likely been starving for awhile. Many of the dead they came across had been so for some time, most for days or even weeks according to the bioscans. Some weren’t even whole anymore, missing limbs, body parts scattered throughout the streets. Dread and a terrible familiarity filled Jim’s gut.

“Captain,” one of the security officers called Jim over to the side of a building with a hitch of his head. There against a brick wall were five crumpled bodies all in a row. Lieutenant Mornay crouched down, his gloved hand delicately lifting one dead woman’s chin to show the concentrated scorch-mark down her neck and shoulder.

“These look like disrupter burns,” Mornay told him quietly, pointing. “And there’s no blood from the mouth and eyes, no broken blood vessels under the skin, like the survivors we’re finding. These ones weren’t even sick yet. Starving, probably, but not sick.”

Kneeling down, Jim looked over the other bodies, all with matching burns to their torsos or faces.

“These people were executed,” he confirmed, “And not more than maybe a couple days ago.” Possibly even less than that. Something else was going on here, something far more sinister. “Keep looking, Lieutenant. Work in grids with Leahey, and have Ramirez scanning for any unfriendly signatures that shouldn’t be here.”

“Yes, sir,” nodded Mornay, and went to organize the others.

Jim frowned to himself in thought. Romulans or Klingons made the most sense, given the location on the other side of their empires, but their main beefs were with worlds on the Fed side. That’s where all the current military action was going on. Why would they waste time and resources to come after a peaceful colony with few people and what seemed like no defenses? 

The Admiralty’s orders to bring the _Enterprise_ way out here in the boonies had been a blanket exploratory mission, setting beacons and visiting unexplored systems, but Jim also had the clearance to know it was a strategic effort on the Fed's part to begin establishing more significant territory in Beta Quadrant, flanking their main adversaries from an unexpected direction. Chances were this colony would not be the last in this part of space. But the mission had counted on laying low and not inviting attention in the first place. This colony had managed to thrive out here for over a century with barely any help, almost like they’d been forgotten; it had never been mentioned in the dossiers on the sector they’d received. If it had been, he would have insisted on a welfare check after an unacceptable fifty year discrepancy. He’d have to ask Spock what he thought about the lax reporting from ‘Fleet.

“Sir!” another security officer, Leahey, called from several meters away, “There’s a shuttle hanger over here.” They headed that way, seeing more evidence of possible skirmishes, and more groups of corpses lined up against buildings. 

The hanger itself was built to house two old multi-passenger shuttles, likely the same ones that had transported the colonists from the mothership above down to the planet, but only one shuttle was present, and it was clearly disabled. 

“The whole cockpit’s blown to smithereens, sir,” Leahey told him as Jim climbed inside, “No sign of the other one. Maybe somebody got away?”

“But where would they go?” Jim asked, mostly rhetorically, examining and tossing a piece of shrapnel from the deck. “Their ship isn’t functional, they would have known that. And these shuttles aren't warp capable.”

“Jim, what’s going on?” Bones asked, taking in the scene from the entry.

“I don’t know, but we’re going to find out.” He commed the whole team, “Everyone be on alert, phasers on maximum stun. We might not be alone down here.”

He thumbed his comm frequency to the ship. It was nearly time for a check-in anyway. “Spock, are you scanning up there? Anything showing up?”

“ _Negative, Captain. Long range scans have been running since we arrived in orbit,_ ” Spock answered, “ _There is one notable energy signature within the system. Mr. Chekov attributes it to the recent passing of a comet with a large elliptical orbit around Velarus._ ”

“Triple-check that. And keep your eyes open for any neighbors,” Jim said.

“ _Captain?_ ”

“Gut feeling. Kirk out.”

They located one more survivor in a home before spotting a woman waving at them from an upper window. Through the main door, it was clear this modest two story facility was the medical clinic, and it was well below McCoy’s standards. Lights were flickering or out altogether, the floors dirtied with various dried fluids and piles of refuse, and gurneys lined the walls, draped with bloody sheets.

The woman from the window met them, standing tall and proud in old-fashioned scrubs. She too was very thin, her dark skin showing a dull yellowish pallor. “Laña,” she patted her chest. “Mio medico.”

“I suppose you’re the only doctor left around here, eh?” McCoy asked abrasively as he ran his scanner over her. She met his eyes levelly. “Where are your patients?”

She directed them into a single room on the ground floor, which may have once been a cafeteria rather than a treatment area. Only five beds were occupied, and she rushed to the side of one, her long slim hands going to the man’s wrist. After a moment, she shook her head, pulled the sheet up over his head, and made to push the gurney out into the hall. The other beds held two younger women, one very tall man whose feet hung from the edge of the mattress, and two young girls, likely twins, tucked together in the same bed and folded around each other. Bones went to them first, his gloved hands gentle as he brushed the sweaty hair from their foreheads and frowned at his tricorder readings. Jim helped the medics move Jorgé and the other survivors into beds.

“Jorgé,” Jim took the sick man’s hand, “Who came here? What happened?”

He shook his head, eyes welling again, “Não importante. Estamos mortis.”

“It is important. Es muy importante, comprende?” Jim contested hotly. “We’re not gonna let you die, okay?”

“Muito tardo,” the man whispered, “Muito tardo pora mi, Kapitano.”

Bones returned, pulling him aside to mutter quietly, “They’re all infected, including the doc there,” he gestured with the tricorder in frustration. “This is even worse than I thought it would be, Jim. Their computer systems haven’t been working for days, if not weeks. Screw what Spock said, their medical tech is all but useless without a solid power supply. These ancient biobeds are offline, med storage unit panels are all showing major interruptions if they’re on at all, which means any meds they do have probably aren’t viable. Even those old cleaner bots are dead. And I didn’t see lights on anywhere else out there.”

“Laña,” Jim asked, taking a chance she understood Standard well enough, “What happened to the main power grid for the city?”

“Esta morti, pora lunas,” she shrugged, “La generatores es muito mortas.”

“A moon? A month, whatever a month is here,” Jim parsed that out, wishing for Uhura’s immediacy, “They’re on generator power, but it’s not going to last.”

“Vi estas muito tardo,” Laña told them, crossing her arms defensively. _You’re too late_.

“We came as soon as we heard you,” he tried.

Laña said nothing, pride and pain in her eyes, and turned away to tend to one of the women who had begun to vomit.

“Jim,” Bones lowered his voice. “Never mind how old this equipment is, none of it is sterilized, not without sustained power and at least a day to run full sanitation sequences on everything. Even if we set up our own quarantine tents down here, none of these people have that kind of time.”

“We should beam them up, treat them in Medbay,” Jim said. “I know it’s against protocol, but—”

“We can’t risk it; you know that's why the protocol exists. We always contain on-planet, always. If we had the time…” Jim met Bones’ hard gaze through their masks and knew he was being overridden in the only way he could be. Bones’ face went apologetic, “This bug isn’t anything I recognize. With a few hours and my lab, I could try to pick it apart, isolate its weak points, synthesize some kind of targeted antiviral. Maybe give some of these people a chance. Not all of them, but…” His eyes lingered on the young twins huddled together, “Maybe some of them could fight it. There’s not much else we can do.”

Jim let out a breath, looking sadly around the room. A colony of almost nine thousand people and probably more, reduced to single digits. He nodded, “Do it. Get it done and beam back here as soon as you can.”

“Jim—”

He held up a hand, stopping what he knew was coming. As cynical as Bones was, as a doctor he didn’t give up easily and not without a fight, even with shitty odds. They were too late. It was all too familiar, and it made him even more determined to get to the bottom of it. “We have to try for them.”

Bones backed down with a nod, turning to gather his team into the hallway.

As all but one of his medics dematerialized directly into the ship’s quarantine and decontamination unit, he checked the time on his mask display. They were just a few hours into Alpha on the ship, but on the planet, the sun was about to go down. He sighed and pinged his comm again. “Spock, come in.”

“ _Spock here_.”

“We’ve found nine survivors,” he stopped as Laña and his remaining medic pulled the sheet up over the head of the woman who had vomited, shaking his head, “We’ve got eight survivors, but the medical facilities here aren’t viable, power’s in and out, running on a generator that’s probably about to bite the dust. Bones and his team just beamed back to synthesize some kind of treatment.”

“ _Yes, Captain,_ ” Spock replied, “ _We have established the building in which you are currently located is running on a self-contained battery generator, which will exhaust its power supply in approximately 1.2 hours. There is a second generator inside the building Lieutenant Uhura identified as the Communications center, also within an estimated 7 hours of failure. There are no other power sources or Human life readings save your survivors and our away team._ ”

“What about that energy signature?”

“ _Mr. Chekov is 99% certain the previous signature is related to the comet’s orbit upon scanning in triplicate.”_

That gave Jim a smile; of course Spock would actually make the kid run the scans three times. 

“You’re not picking up any other readings at all?” Jim asked, “Non-Human life signs on planet?”

 _“There is considerable activity gathering around the compound, non-Humanoid lifeforms of approximately 80% less biomass than your signatures—most likely small native fauna. There are no larger or recognizable signatures within a 100 kilometer radius. I would advise caution._ ”

“Alright,” Jim sighed, making a decision. “Spock, I think I want you to come down after all. There’s something else going on here. Fill Scotty in and then suit up. And bring a couple more security guys with you.”

There was a short pause and then, “ _Understood_.”

He flicked the channel to his away team still searching on the ground, “Mornay, come in.” There was no answer. “Mornay, Leahey, Ramirez. This is Kirk, check-in.”

Nothing. Something wasn’t right.

“Paz e lumo sanctielos,” Laña murmured softly.

He crossed to her, determined to get an answer. “What else happened here? What about the killings in the street?”

Her jaundiced eyes deadened, looking away.

“Answer me,” he took her arm, which was little more than bone and sinew beneath her cardigan. She was putting up a valiant front, but she was going down hard with the disease and starvation too. “Ma’am, please. I can’t help you if I don’t know everything.”

“Others,” she said, in Standard. “Don’t know. Never seen. When they come, sick already.” She turned away, covering a wet cough in her elbow.

Jim pulled aside his remaining medic, Nurse Gibrian, as he returned from wheeling the dead woman to the hall, “What else can you do here?”

The nurse looked around, shaking his head, “We’ve given them all plasma expanders and white blood cell boosters, with fever reducers and mild sedatives to make them comfortable. They’re going to need transfusions if any of them make it through the night. Otherwise nothing, until Dr. McCoy gets back. I’m sorry, sir.”

“What about her?” Jim asked quietly, nodding to their ailing doctor.

“Get her off her feet and in a bed,” the medic murmured back, “She’s as sick as the rest, just stubborn as hell. I can’t believe she’s upright.”

“Persuade her,” Jim nodded, “Stay here with them, check-in with McCoy. Spock and I are gonna go round up the rest of our team, we’ll rendezvous back here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“ _Captain!_ ” His comm lit up abruptly with Mornay’s voice, “ _We’re u— at–k. Pa– of a–mals, sir! We can’t ou––em!_ ”

“What? Mornay, say again?” There was nothing but clatter and static. “Mornay, come in! Shit.”

“Mortimanges,” Laña told him, overhearing. She made a searching gesture for the word in Standard, “Es… scavengers. Too many morti. They come.”

Jim took her arm more gently than before, urging her to a free bed, “You need to rest, ma’am. We’re going to go have a look.”

“No! No, Kapitano! Mais vem a nokte!” she resisted, pointed at the windows. “La lumo j’iris! La lumo!”

Frowning, Jim couldn’t make most of that out, “Lumo? Light? That’s okay, we have lights, see?” He showed her the arclight attached to his belt.

“Insuficiente,” she shook her head, beginning to cough again, “Mortimanges, they come.” The fit overtook her hard, blood oozing from her lips.

“We’ll be alright.” 

He nodded to his medic to take over and jogged back to the entrance to meet his incoming officers. 

Spock materialized in the street near the hospital doors, flanked with two more security lieutenants, Gu'on and Comrie, all of them suited up.

He nodded to each of them. “We lost contact with Mornay, Leahey and Ramirez a few minutes ago. I don’t know what happened, but it sounded like they were in trouble. Their doctor here said something about scavengers. They were burning bodies in pits near the fence.”

“The biosigns we picked up from the ship are growing significantly in number around the perimeter, Captain,” Spock said, indicating his tricorder. “Animal activity does seem likely.”

“We need to go find them, then, they might be hunkered down somewhere and trapped. Gu'on, I want you to stay here with the medic, the third room on the right in there. Comrie, with us.”

They moved out, phasers ready. Jim touched the arclight at his belt, but even with night quickly falling, it was hardly necessary to see by.

“She said something about light too. Look at that,” he pointed out two of the massive but dark fixtures mounted at intervals on the perimeter wall, “Why would they point so much light up at the sky? Seems like that would just announce their presence to anything passing by, hostile or otherwise, don’t you think?”

“It does seem unnecessary,” Spock agreed, looking up at the dusky sky. “I would postulate that the larger moon illuminates the skies to a near diurnal state when full.” 

At the moment the moons looked to be waxing—one a massive yellow scimitar curving up from the horizon, the other hovering at the edge of the jagged mountains, small, irregularly shaped and deep mauve. Together, they painted the previously blue sky in shades of orange and violet as the sun dropped out of sight. Everything was twilit, the gloaming between night and day, but not even close to fully dark.

“Spock, it isn’t just the virus,” Jim spoke as they walked, “Some of these people were lined up and executed. We found one of their shuttles obviously sabotaged. And with the power grid down too…”

“This is your ‘gut feeling’, Captain?” Spock asked. “When faced with mortal peril, it is not uncommon for even peaceful people to turn against one another.”

Jim hazarded a smile. Spock had often questioned his bouts of Human intuition over the years, always a voice of logic over conjecture, but he’d also acknowledged that Jim wasn’t often wrong. “Laña, the doctor we met at the hospital, she said ‘others’ came, when the colony was sick,” he explained, theorizing, “Someone came here, destroyed their ships, and killed people who weren’t showing symptoms. On top of whatever famine is going on; they were starving anyway. It’s like someone was waiting for them to die and just got impatient.”

“That may explain the power outages as well,” Spock said, “This colony has few defenses. If an unknown assailant had—” 

He stopped abruptly, snapping his phaser down a darkening alleyway with intent. Jim and Comrie mirrored him automatically.

“What is it?” Jim whispered.

“Movement within five meters,” Spock remained still for several seconds, raising his tricorder to brace by his phaser arm. “There.”

Jim edged closer, seeing the signature of three small creatures on the screen, then peered into the area himself. The sun had gone down quickly, and while the moons gave off an ambient pinkish orange glow in the open areas, the buildings were beginning to cast shadows dark enough that he couldn’t quite make anything out behind jumbled canisters of refuse. Something about the nature of the moonlight made them seem darker and more impenetrable. “Can you find our guys?”

Spock keyed the tricorder to search a wider grid, picking up multiple groupings of animals along the edges of the compound, both inside the perimeter walls and out, flowing in from the nearest opening in the fence. They scurried along walls and darted swiftly through open areas like rats. 

“There are four entries into the city compound in each direction,” Spock said, “Given their size, it is likely the gates operate on powered hydraulic systems and cannot be closed manually in the outage.”

“That sucks,” Jim murmured.

“Indeed.”

An odd chirping, laughing sound chittered from another direction, making them whip around. Something small, long and dark melted into the shadows behind a brick garden bed, blending very well with the purplish darkness.

“You don’t build a fence like that for nothing,” Jim said, “My guess is it’s a big something.”

Comrie frowned, “That thing didn’t look much bigger than my kid sister’s pet kitty cat.”

“Small, but many in number, Lieutenant,” Spock murmured, looking at the signatures gathering by the dozens on the tricorder. “And that does not preclude similar species of larger size as most biodiverse planets possess. Domesticated Terran felines share 95.6% of their genome with other felids—such as the tiger.” The tricorder bleeped at finding Human readings, surrounded by the smaller signatures. “Captain, I have them.”

“Let’s go,” said Jim.

As they headed in the direction of their guys, it was clear more and more of the animals were infiltrating the city. The noises they made increased until they could be heard from any well-shaded area, hissing and chittering and occasionally darting across streets and paths from one dark space to another. They moved fast and low, more graceful than reptiles but not quite like cats, with long toothy snouts and whipping tails.

“Captain!” Comrie shouted before firing behind. A shriek rang out, the animal skittering back to the shadows now rippling with activity. Dozens had become hundreds in no time at all. “They’re following us, lots of them!” 

“Yeah,” Jim muttered, watching ahead as he could make out a bunch of the scavengers gathered near a wall. As they drew closer, it was obvious they had lit upon another crumpled group of bodies, ripping and biting and fighting with each other like sharks in a feeding frenzy. Comrie fired again, and again, each time a popping shriek as the creatures reacted and dove away only briefly. 

“Captain,” Spock urged, “We are closing on them. This way.”

The fastest path was through a dark alleyway, covered by an arched roof. Jim grabbed for the arclight on his belt, aiming down the tunnel, and masses of the creatures dispersed like a spooked school of sardines, hissing and yowling. 

“Light,” he suddenly remembered Laña’s plea. “They don’t like the light! Use your lights! ” he exclaimed. Ahead, a shout was heard, clearly Human. “Let’s go!”

Comrie quickly followed suit as Spock manned the tricorder. The alley cleared with growls and shrieks of animals falling over each other to avoid their beams. Someone screamed and Jim picked up his pace, firing a shot or two at the ground as some of the animals got brave and snapped too close to his ankles.

They emerged into the next open square, where groups of the scavengers were piled on top of each other to feed in the shadows, another dozen climbing up against the trunk of a large tree where, kicking and yelling, Ramirez was clinging to a branch, frantically trying to get out of reach.

“No!” Jim shouted, seeing red as he flicked his phaser to ‘kill’ and fired, the mass of animals exploding away before they regrouped to continue dragging the woman down. He fired again, and could hear the others firing as well, but most of the creatures weren’t dissuaded; there were just too many. Ramirez screamed as she was dragged down and under. 

“Captain, help!” Comrie suddenly yelled, and Jim whirled to see him being overtaken by another swarm. 

“No!” Jim shouted again, firing in succession.

“Captain,” Spock’s voice broke through his haze, a firm grip on his arm pulling him away as he continued shooting, “We must retreat. Now.”

The scavengers were everywhere, on all sides, and some animals were even braving the moonlight as they gave chase. Jim let out an agonized moan as he saw one dragging a detached limb that had once belonged to one of his officers, the red reflective stripes of his lieutenant’s evo suit sleeve clearly visible. Spock hauled him firmly to the entrance of a nearby building, almost tripping over his own feet with the animals snapping and clawing at their heels. Firing at the locked door, Spock shouldered it open with a crash as Jim fought the onslaught behind with phaser fire and few vicious kicks.

“Fuck!” he raged, flecks of spit dotting the inside of his mask as Spock shoved him through the doorway and turned to slam it shut against the frenzy behind them. “Goddammit!”

The door shifted on its broken hinges, threatening to collapse against the scratching and thumping behind it, before Spock used his strength to push a massive metal chest of parcel drawers in front of it. “I recommend we retreat to an upper floor and barricade ourselves in, Captain.”

“No! We have to go back, we have to help—”

“Jim,” Spoke spoke his name quietly, putting a gloved hand on his shoulder, “They are beyond our help.”

Biting the inside of his cheek, Jim squeezed his free hand into a fist, still staring at the blocked door with tears in his eyes.

“I am sorry,” Spock’s fingers briefly squeezed before letting go.

“Dammit,” Jim huffed again, holstering his phaser to pull out his communicator, which was lighting up with a mass of noise. “Kirk here, say again?”

 _“Got a mess up here, Cap’n!”_ came Scotty’s voice under a ruckus.

“I’ve got a mess down here, Scotty, we need an immediate beam out!”

 _“We can’t, Captain,”_ the communicator lit with Uhura’s voice now, _“We’re under attack!”_

“From who?” he yelled back in frustration, “Why didn’t you comm?”

 _“We did, you didn’t answer,”_ she commed back over the sound of shouting and what sounded like explosions, _“They came out of nowhere, sir, we’ve taken heavy damage!”_

“Uhura—”

 _“We’re taking too much damage, Cap’n,”_ Scotty’s harried voice returned, _“I dinnae ken she can take more, we’re at 18% shields and dropping!”_

“Scotty,” Jim tried to keep his thoughts together. He needed to be up there with his crew. “Can you beam us out? Who’s attacking us?”

 _“If I drop shields you’ll not have a ship to beam onto.”_ He left the channel open, shouting to the helm over the sounds of chaos, _”Evasive maneuvers, Sulu, get us the hell out of that beam!”_

Jim gritted his teeth, looking up to Spock’s dark eyes. He pressed the comm button again. “Retreat, Scotty. Full retreat, get the hell out of there. Come back for us when… when you can. Come back for us.”

 _“Aye, sir,”_ the comm sounded another shudder. _I’m sorry, Cap’n.”_

 _“Jim, is Spock—”_ Uhura's voice started, and then the line went dead.

“Scotty? Mr. Scott?” Jim tried, and tried again. “Uhura?” 

There was nothing but dead air. They were gone.

“Captain,” Spock urged at the sounds of the animals clawing at the door and windows, “We must retreat ourselves, upstairs.”

“Yeah.”

Spock headed down the hall of the building, seeking out a stair with his arclight. Jim pinged his comm again as he followed, trying to reach his remaining officers on planet, his nurse and the security lieutenant that they’d left behind at the hospital. “Gibrian, Gu'on, this is Kirk, come in. Come in, Gib,” he used the nickname he knew Bones used in medbay. Gibrian was one of his best nurses, nice young kid. Jim had woken to his easy smile and gentle hands after shitty missions a couple times. Gu'on was a seven foot tall Rhodrienii who kicked Jim and Sulu’s asses at hoops just last week.

There was no answer. 

“Guys, if you can hear me, don't go outside. Barricade yourselves in and wait for us to come back. We’ll come back for you, alright? Kirk out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The pidgin language is meant to emulate how a language might have evolved with elements from Spanish, Portuguese and Esperanto. It was pieced together using google translations. I am not a linguist, and I don't speak any of these languages, but here are some translations if you're interested.
> 
>  
> 
>  _Muito tardo. Estamos morti. Esta toto morti. Paz e lumo tu sancti._ – Too late. We’re all dead. Everyone is dead. Peace and light bless you.
> 
>  _Mi não nomo. Mio morti._ —I have no name. I’m dead.
> 
>  _Mais vem a nokte! La lumo j’iris!_ —They come at night! The lights are off!


	3. Chapter 3

“Spock, what are you looking for?” Jim followed his XO down a hallway as he shined his arclight into doorways and halls before moving on.

“This is the building identified by Lieutenant Uhura as the origin of the colonists’ distress signal,” he answered, pausing to push a large shelving unit in front of the door to another stairway and brace it with a heavy metal desk, before moving onward. “Locating its source may provide us with more information about what has happened here.”

Finally finding the broadcast center, Jim took in the blinking panels and whirring of computers in the otherwise dark building. “I guess the generator is still working.”

“Yes. However, our tests on the _Enterprise_ estimated it is likely to fail within the next 5.7 hours,” Spock said, quickly settling into a chair in front of an old-fashioned comm station console.

Jim darted between the two windows in the room, trying to get a view into the sky to see if there was any sign of their ship, or another up there. Standard orbit ought to have made a skirmish visible by night, but he couldn’t see anything. The eaves had been built to overhang quite far, hiding most of the sky from view. Below, all he could see was masses of the scavengers squabbling in the shadows.

“Who would be capable of attacking the _Enterprise_ out here?” he asked, “Romulans? Klingons?”

“They would be the mostly likely suspects, however, the known boundaries of their empires are 143.22 and 98.674 light years away, respectively,” Spock answered, “There is also a possibility of an unknown species we have yet to encounter, given our distance from established Federation territory.”

“Is there something on this planet they’d want? Seems like an obvious thing, doesn’t it?” Jim asked. “Did the colonists mine anything here?”

“Beyond surface stone and metals necessary for building and basic electronics, I do not believe so,” Spock answered while scanning through the computer’s programming. “Initial scans showed the planet is rich in base elements such as iron, copper, aluminum and lead, but very little naturally occurring heavy isotopes or compounds such as dilithium, deuterium, or tritium in sufficient quantity to repair or refuel their ship, not within reach of the habitable region. Humans with limited resources would not be capable of surviving in the polar regions, nor of reaching bedrock far below the ice.”

“Maybe not these Humans, but that doesn’t mean another advanced race wouldn’t be able to.”

“True,” conceded Spock, turning to him, “However, there would be no need to eliminate or even disturb a small colony while mining in regions thousands of kilometers away. Also, we did not detect any other lifeforms on our planetary scans of those regions, advanced or otherwise.”

“But we didn’t detect whoever attacked our ship either,” Jim pointed out with some exasperation.

The dim lights suddenly flickered out, as well as all the servers and equipment in the room. It was brief, but long enough to cause the elderly machines to force a reset. 

“I guess that explains the interruptions in the signal,” Jim grumbled, moving back to the other window, scanning the narrow strip of sky he could see. “Did you get anything from that computer?”

“It is set only to relaunch and broadcast the distress signal. I found no explanation of events leading to this point,” Spock stood and moved across to a shelf where old padds were stacked haphazardly, some resting in chargers.

Jim went for his comm again, trying in vain to get a hold of Gibrian, or their ship.

“Captain, I anticipate we will be required to pass the night in this room,” Spock said, “Perhaps we should settle in. It is possible the _Enterprise_ will return for us shortly.”

That was Spock-speak for _sit the fuck down and chill, Jim_ , and as annoying as it was, he was probably right.

There was nothing from their comms, nothing but the constant shrieks and chitters of the animals outside the building. Trying to tune out the noise, Jim followed Spock’s lead and began reading whatever was available to pass the time. 

Around the room, there were shelves with binders and notebooks of real paper, what appeared to be broadcast schedules and programs, but little of real use. He found nothing of any relevance to their predicament, and assumed Spock would mention if he had either. 

Apparently this society had made a return to radio procedurals, mostly of cheesy comedy hours with euphemisms in their vernacular that he couldn’t quite make sense of, even with the UT in their communicators. The padds also had similar content. After a few hours of struggling through articles about living with optimism, discovering one’s joy and maintaining happiness in trying times, he gave it up in frustration. It was as if the colonist’s solution to dealing with a serious problem was to pretend it didn’t exist and hope it went away. All the while, the power continued to flicker off and on, until sometime in the early hours of the planet’s morning, the generator failed altogether.

When the windows finally brightened, Jim got up and looked outside again. From what he could see, the animals had gone with the first tentative rays of the sun. “Come on, let’s get out there. We need to get back to Gib and Gu'on, and check on Laña and the others.”

Spock already had the tricorder in hand, scanning their immediate area. “It does appear most of the animals have retreated, though some are taking cover within dwellings to escape the sunlight. We must exercise caution, Captain.”

Jim nodded, checking and holstering his phaser. They made their way back down the stairs, Spock pushing his heavy barricades aside, to the street. Out in the large square, where all the chaos had taken place the previous night, the animals had gone, but their traces were everywhere. 

They picked their way around body parts, drag marks, entrails and scraps of clothing, scratches all over the doors and shutters of the ground floor windows. There was even the occasional dead animal, killed by their own brethren in the frenzy, and piles of their feces all over too. As they made their way back through the streets and courtyards toward the medical facility, those that had been caught out in the open too late by the dawn made themselves known, hissing from within the dark shadows of broken doorways as they passed by.

Rounding the final corner, Jim encountered what he had feared most throughout the long night. “Oh, no no no, dammit, no,” he muttered, running to the outstretched body of his Security Lieutenant Gu'on, lying in front of the medical building. The huge Rhodrienii’s evo suit was half-shredded, his mask gone, bite marks and scratches all over his blue skin and yellow blood pooling on the cobblestone. Four arms and his vast strength hadn’t been able to fend off hundreds of the vicious little creatures, though they must have disliked the taste of him, for he was still whole.

The doors of the hospital were broken wide open, and they could hear more scavengers scrounging in the dark within. Tricorder in hand, Spock made no move towards the building, shaking his head when Jim looked to him hopefully. Gib and Laña, Jorgé, the sick kids; none of them would have been capable of fighting off those numbers. Gu’on had fought to protect them all, to his own end.

“Fuck!” Jim vented his rage and grief, going to his knees to cradle the head of his dead lieutenant.

Spock knelt beside him, silent for a time in contemplation of their fallen man. “Rhodrienii have particular rituals of cremation, Captain,” he spoke quietly, looking up at the sun. “There is time. We will honor him according to his wishes.”

Jim nodded numbly, feeling his tears gather at the bottom of his mask.

They spent the remainder of the day erecting a platform of wood scavenged from doors and shutters, furniture and other detritus. They fought off a small number of the creatures to claim the bodies of those in the hospital, washing what was left of them with water from the fountains and wrapping them in the cleanest sheets they could find. Jim gathered flowers still growing from the garden beds to lay around the shrouded remains of Jorgé, Laña, and the twin girls lain together with them. He scratched their names into the brick of the fountain, the last survivors of the colony of Bono Fortuno. Lieutenant Alex Benjamin Gibrian, RN, he marked with his Starfleet rank and his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania. He did the same for Mornay, Leahey, and Ramirez, but he could not for the life of him remember Comrie’s hometown, which angered him to no end. Spock, with his eidetic recall, was able to provide the last detail, but Jim was still resolving in his head to do better by his crew.

When it was nearly evening, they set the pyres alight. As they burned, Spock recited ritual words of ‘ascension to the celestial battlefield’ that he must have come across at some point in his cultural studies of every species serving aboard the ship. They had no food to hold the traditional feast for a fallen Rhodrienii warrior, and the species forbid writing the names of their dead, but they had honored their crew members and the colonists as well as they could.

As the sun fell, they could see the mortimanges gathering around the compound on the tricorder once again, and retreated back to the relative safety of the comms building and barricaded themselves inside, tired, hungry and aching from the day’s work. The moons rose and the animals ran rampant, scratching and fighting beyond the walls. So perhaps someone was feasting after all, Jim thought bitterly.

He lay down on the hard couch in the room for awhile, trying to ignore his growling stomach, but the faces of his lost crewmen kept haunting his thoughts, recalling details from their files, the way he always did when he fucked up and got his people killed. Comrie had three children on a starbase somewhere, two girls and a boy. Mornay had transferred from the USS _Regent_ with outstanding recommendations. Ramirez had an older sister who had died on the _Farragut_ at the Battle of Vulcan. He had a whole ship full of the very best and brightest Starfleet had to offer. What had happened to them up there? Bones and Sulu and the rest, had they managed to escape? Or had they…

After an hour he sat back up with a frustrated sigh, finding Spock across from him in the desk chair, still perusing padds.

“You’re going to run the battery down to nothing,” he commented.

Spock’s eyes didn’t leave the padd, but he nodded, “Yes.”

These padds were all pretty old tech too, holding whatever had been downloaded from the now dead servers in this community or perhaps the dead ship they’d arrived in. They were able to hold only a fraction of the data of today’s padds, and way out here, unable to remotely access the Fed database. Which would have become available now that the _Enterprise_ had finally come along and set a damn beacon nearby. What a waste. Jim huffed in annoyance, “What is that, anyway?”

“I am attempting to absorb as much information as the colonists have written about life on this planet,” Spock explained, “It is logical to make use of the available resources. This padd will lose its charge in 26 minutes, regardless of use.”

“What are you learning, then?” Jim asked, since his own attempts came to nothing. “Care to share with the class?”

“There is a large biodiversity within the explored habitable area. Early research by the colonial scientists identified 179 species of animal, 656 of plant, 67 fungi. They do not provide detailed studies of each on this padd, however.” He paused, probably in disgust of lax Human research practices, then added, “In the event we must remain here for an extended period of time, I would propose that we locate and scan as many of these as possible while our tricorder still holds a charge, so that we are certain of those a Vulcan and a Human with considerable allergies may safely consume.”

Jim snorted, “I don’t even know all of my stupid allergies.”

“Dr. McCoy supplied me with a list of compounds most likely to trigger your histamine response 4.7 years ago.”

“That bastard,” he shook his head, “What the hell ever happened to patient confidentiality?”

“Given the incidents during our diplomacy missions on Vargus VII and Omaticaria Prime, I deemed it necessary to simply ask, so that I may prevent such instances from occurring in the future. Leonard agreed.”

“Still, the Hippocratic Oath exists.”

“It was merely a list of chemical compounds, Captain. I assure you, I will keep your strictest confidence,” Spock sent him a pointed look. “We both know Leonard’s version of the oath is a slightly altered version. If I have the phrasing correct—‘Do no harm, take no shit’.”

Jim snorted again, but then sobered. “I wonder if he figured out what he needed to know about the virus. Not that it matters now.”

Spock set the padd down, straightening his spine as much as possible in the chair. _Here it comes_ , thought Jim. This was how it worked anytime Spock had an opinion he already knew Jim would disagree with.

“Captain, at this point I would recommend that we evacuate this area in the daylight,” Spock stated formally. “Given the voracity of the local wildlife and what we do not know about the nature of the disease, I believe it would be prudent to establish a more secure base from which to anticipate the _Enterprise’s_ return.”

“There’s no one left who’s sick, Spock.”

“That does not lessen the risk,” his XO replied, “The bodies of the dead remain in various states of decomposition and—”

Jim pointed to the windows, talking over him, “With the number of those little assholes out there, not for long.”

“—we have no way of knowing if the virus is airborne. We must also be wary of those you believe marauded the colonists, and who may have attacked our ship. They may well return. We cannot remain here indefinitely. We are putting ourselves and anyone who comes to our rescue at risk by staying.”

“We’re at risk anyway,” he said, pulling out his authority, “We wait for the ship to come back.”

“Captain—”

“They’re gonna come back for us, Spock,” he retorted, “They have to.”

 

Jim woke up to a still dark communications room with the edges of his mask pressing bruises into his cheek and chin. Shifting on the uncomfortable couch, he groaned at the stiffness in his body, among other annoying things. Evo suits were designed for hostile atmospheres and to keep out biohazards, but not for long term wear. At this point, he was really wishing they were.

“Captain,” Spock asked from across the small room. “Are you well?”

“I’m fine, Spock. I’m just… hungry,” he muttered, squirming, “And I have to pee.” 

“Failure to evacuate the Human bladder on a regular basis can lead to urinary tract and kidney infection.”

“I know, I know,” he grumbled.

“As a Vulcan, I am able to conserve my body fluids for sustained periods,” Spock continued, “You, however, must rehydrate every 72 hours, preferably more often. You have not partaken food or drink in 38.6 hours. You must be parched.”

“Spock, you’re not actually telling me anything I don’t know,” Jim groused.

“I would recommend—”

“No.”

“Captain—”

“Just… give it a little longer,” he said, staring up at the ceiling. “Give me specs. Take my mind off it.”

“Captain?”

“Talk to me. Tell me everything you know about this place.”

Spock focused on a point just passed Jim, like he always did for a briefing. “Velarusa IV is an M-class planet in a system of eighteen planetary bodies in orbit around the G-type yellow dwarf star Velarus. The planet’s equatorial radius is 5,234 kilometers. The solar day is 29.8 Standard hours, with an orbital year of 315 days. Gravity is Earth similar, averaging 9.7 meters per second. The planet is composed of 86% water, with two continental land masses. It is currently experiencing glaciation, an ice age, rendering the northern continent uninhabitable to Humanoids.”

Jim watched Spock recite like he had a textbook downloaded into that big Vulcan brain of his. Bones was always calling him a computer, but Jim kind of envied that kind of recall. If he could do that, he could be sitting here rereading all of his favorite books inside his own head right now.

“Velarusa IV possesses two natural satellites, Flava Vizio, and the smaller Luna Rosita—Yellow Face and Little Rose to the locals. Together, they exert significant gravitational force on the planet, resulting in extreme daily tidal fluctuation at the coastal regions. The axial tilt is approximately 11 degrees, plus or minus some oscillation of obliquity. Our position is approximately 7 degrees south of equatorial zero, and experiences some seasonal fluctuation. Biomes range from steppe grasslands, temperate rainforest to tundra. This part of the continent is entering its cooler season, with monsoon weather patterns of regular rain and thunderstorms. A warm, dry season follows. Recorded ambient temperatures range between 0.5 to 41.7 degrees Celsius.

“Even if your body could continue to function without hydration, Captain, the oxygen filtration system of the Starfleet issue evo mask is not designed to function beyond a sustained period of 40 hours,” Spock didn’t miss a beat, rattling this off like it was another of his planetary statistics. 

Jim took a deep breath of the thick, overwarm air filtered by his mask and let it out heavily. He was hungry, itchy, sore, and frustrated with how this whole mission had played out. He closed his eyes again. Maybe the colonists had it right, blatantly ignoring how shitty things had gotten. “Tell me something about home.”

“Pardon me?”

“Something that isn’t related to this mission,” he expanded, “What were you doing after shift, the night before we left? You left our chess game early.”

“I updated the experimental science logs and replied to some personal correspondence,” said Spock, after a moment’s thought.

“Anyone I know?”

“Cadet Jaylah.”

“Really?”

Spock inclined his head, “The cadet and I have remained in contact since she departed for the Academy.”

“Huh,” Jim peered at him, “Of all of us, she talks to you?”

“In her message, she informed me that she had received another demerit for participating in an off-campus altercation,” Spock described, “It is of particular note on this occasion that she restrained herself from getting physical, but questioned why she was punished anyway.”

“And what did you say to that?” he asked, amused.

Spock raised an eyebrow, “I informed her that excellent academic scores aside, adherence to the Starfleet Officer Citizenship Model will be required to complete the program. She continues to struggle with authority.”

Jim grinned, “That one’s mine.”

“Captain?”

“Come on, Spock,” he pressed, “You can’t tell me you don’t want Jaylah on the _Enterprise_.”

“In that case, it would be our authority that she would question.”

“Jaylah respects authority when it’s earned, just like me,” said Jim. “Plus, don’t you think she’d be an asset to the ship, as smart as she is?”

“I would not be averse to her assignment, but it will depend upon positions available when she has graduated, as well as her decision of concentration. Thus far, she displays keen interests and aptitude within all three major tracks of study. Her scores in the novice piloting program and combat tactics are in the 80th percentile of her class. In engineering and mechanics, she scores in the 90th percentile.” 

“How do you know that?” Jim frowned. He’d kept tabs on Jaylah too, but from afar. He hadn’t wanted to appear to take too much personal interest, though he knew it happened all the damn time.

“The cadet also keeps regular communication with Mr. Scott and Lieutenant Uhura,” he replied. “They often discuss her accomplishments.”

“I get that she’d talk to them, but you’re not exactly the most approachable for a heart-to-heart, Spock.”

“I agree,” Spock conceded, “I would imagine her correspondence with the others is somewhat more informal. Though, Jaylah and I spoke often of our planets while at Yorktown. Nyota believes she identifies with me over mutual losses.”

Jim blinked back up at the ceiling, recalling the beautiful things Jaylah had described of her homeworld. They were an incredibly intelligent and advanced race with a rich history and culture. He remembered the sadness when she had spoken about how the people had been escaping their planet’s annihilation—one of its binary stars was undergoing a catastrophic collapse and would soon become a supernova, consuming their entire system. There was nothing to be done but flee.

Her family had for generations been in the service of government officials, her father a respected head of security. To serve an important figure made them highly regarded within their society and as close as family to the official. They had escaped the planet on his ship, only to get lost within the nebula and caught by Krall’s ‘bees’. Whether or not any of her species remained was still completely unknown. She had survived alone on Altamid for over a decade due to her sheer brilliance and her furious will to live, to escape her loneliness and be a part of something again. Part of a family.

Yeah, it made sense. She had more in common with Spock than probably anyone else. 

It was all the more surprising considering the waxing and waning of any of Spock’s relationships over the years. His Commander and his CMO were more at each other’s throats than ever, though nowadays they appeared to enjoy pecking at each other like a pair of surly hens, at least until one of them truly struck a nerve. Which came to another thing.

The relationship with Uhura was off-again, apparently for good. Jim didn’t know who had spilled the beans and didn’t want to know, but this time she had returned the radioactive necklace, and he’d actually had to threaten Bones with a write-up if he uttered another variant of ‘I told you so’ anywhere within a 30-meter-radius of Spock.

As for Spock and himself, well. Who knew? Maybe Spock did, but Jim sure didn’t. The Uhura thing being off had them spending more time together again, sharing meals, evening paperwork and games of chess, like they had before Nibiru and Khan. But it wasn’t the same.

Something about the Khan incident had changed their dynamic. The way they had interacted felt different ever since he’d woken up from his temporary demise. He couldn’t put his finger on it, because once he’d recovered and they were back out in the black, nothing had really changed, and yet everything had. So much so, that he’d ludicrously considered giving it up for a desk for a brief time.

Jim knew, objectively, that Spock had sort of lost his shit when he had temporarily died. He’d read the reports, and he’d been debriefed by the Admiralty six weeks after the fact. For the first time in Spock's career at Starfleet, he had received disciplinary action for allowing a personal vendetta to cloud his judgement as Acting Captain, a fairly serious offense that would have seen anyone else court-martialed or at least drummed down several ranks, but Someone Somewhere—probably an ambassador, or maybe two—had settled for the permanent black mark on his otherwise sterling service record being enough of a whipping. Plus it had been swiftly counteracted by the commendation he had gotten for capturing and bringing a dangerous fugitive to justice.

Beyond what was on the record, though, he’d heard from Bones’ hesitant recollection, Uhura’s dodged answers, and Sulu’s no-bullshit account of what transpired on the bridge with Chekov’s awe-filled anecdotes. And there was his own hazy memory of things. Spock _crying_ on the other side of the glass. Hell, he could never forget that, even through the agony of radiation cooking his organs.

But he also remembered how Spock was there when he woke up, how Spock was there _every time_ he woke up, for almost the full month until he was released the hospital. Then the weird, jarring way Spock had retreated from him as his recovery progressed, and back into his ultra stiff Vulcan demeanor in the months afterward. Something had opened a rift between them, and he wasn't sure what it was. Maybe Spock had been so embarrassed by his emotional reaction that he closed up tighter than a Denebian clam, assuming he even acknowledged that it happened in the first place.

It wasn’t that he didn’t know Spock felt strong emotions. The elder Spock had made that clear. He even knew with some questioning over the years—at least what the old fucker would disclose and what he’d unraveled on his own—that the Khan incident had gone a similar way in that universe. 

And with that knowledge, with Nero and Khan and Edison behind them, Jim should know by now that seeking revenge was never the best course of action. A good captain must never fall victim to such wrath, should never make snap decisions based on personal issues and past biases. Which is exactly what he’d done here, once again.

“Fuck,” Jim muttered, “This is my fault.”

“Captain, you cannot take blame—”

“I can and I am, Spock,” he retorted, sitting up, “I botched this mission from the get-go. We got here too late, that’s obvious. We should have all retreated back to the ship with the medical team, we should’ve let Bones work it from there and come back down if we had something. Then we’d know what the hell happened up there. Then more people, our people, wouldn’t have died.”

“We could not have predicted an attack when there were no ships on our sensors. I reviewed both the long and short range scans myself before I beamed down, Captain,” Spock told him, “Had I discovered any threat to the ship, I would not have done so.”

“The animals… Laña tried to warn me about them and I ignored her. And she said others had come, attackers.”

“This is not the first time a language barrier has contributed to a mission to going awry,” countered the Vulcan. 

“Yeah, an Earth-based language, not even something hard to decipher, even for me,” Jim sneered, “Would you rather I brought Uhura into this? Would you rather she was down here getting ripped apart?”

Spock’s face darkened, which was close enough to deferral. “When missions arise with so little information, a significant percentage of error is to be expected. There is inherent risk in everything we do. You are aware of this.”

“Sure I am, but I don’t have to like it. Not when people die on my watch,” Jim shot back, his voice cracking. “Not when I sent them out there, people who trust me, and they don’t come home.”

Spock was silent for a time while Jim sniffled behind his mask. “It does not reduce my trust in you,” he said quietly.

“Yeah, well, maybe you should rethink that, Spock. It’s not very logical of you.”

“I disagree,” was his answer, “You are my captain. Trust, even in situations of extreme risk, is vital to the function of our professional and personal relationship. I have understood this since our first mission together.”

Jim looked away with a shake of his head, trying to ignore the sting in his eyes. As much as being the captain had given him the unfailing loyalty of his crew since that fateful mission, and as this odd relationship between them had evolved, it was still hard to believe he deserved any kind of trust. The crew part was learned, it was expected, ingrained with the militaristic precision necessary to command structures. It was why tests like the Kobayashi Maru existed.

But someone like Spock trusting him like this, by choice, by having chosen him as ‘friend’ when that was a concept Vulcans did not hand out indiscriminately, it was hard to swallow. Especially when he’d fucked up so badly. When he continually fucked up so badly.

“Captain,” Spock said. “When we were attacked last night, were you bitten?”

“Maybe,” Jim evaded, shrugging. “They just grazed me. It’s fine. It’s no big deal.”

“It may be a big deal,” Spock said, as he brushed his fingers over the insides of his forearms and wrists. “I was also bitten. I believe the integrity of my evo suit is compromised.”

“Shit,” Jim frowned, “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Is yours as well?”

“I… I don’t know,” he said.

He looked down, tilting his leg to brush gloved fingers over the rumpled fabric on the back of his calves where he could feel broken skin beneath. The composite material was supposed to be highly elastic and self-healing, theoretically it would stretch around even sharp objects and bounce back, but that was on a microscopic level. Large tears were still possible, and teeth had dug in enough that he could feel dried blood sticking the material of his thermals to his skin.

“You should have informed me,” said Spock, and when Jim ignored that, he continued, “You are at far greater risk than I.”

“How do you figure that?” Jim scoffed.

“I am Vulcan,” he said, “As this virus appears to be oriented toward an iron-based hemolytic system, it is likely I will not be affected. It is now imperative that we leave this compound immediately and seek shelter elsewhere. You must be removed from the epicenter of the viral area.”

“Spock, you’re part-Human too, you have no idea what—” Spock moved his hands to the release under his chin, and Jim jolted up, “Spock, don’t!” 

But Spock had quickly pulled off his mask.

“Goddammit!” Jim shouted, “What the fuck, Spock? Why did you do that?”

“To force you to acknowledge the necessity of our departure,” Spock retorted as he stood up and pulled the suit’s taut hood from his head, his hair flattened from the pressure. “Our suits are compromised, and our oxygen filters are within hours of failure. You must eat, drink, and attend your bodily functions. I am able to survive longer, but I too require basic needs. I will not allow you to continue compromising your health.”

“What happened to trusting me?”

“I do trust you, Captain, when you are being rational and objective,” replied Spock, “Currently, you are just being difficult.”

“Fuck,” Jim growled, striding from window to window. “Fuck you, you know? You’re a fucking piece of work. What if I take mine off, huh?”

Spock advanced on him threateningly, “Captain, if you attempt to remove your mask before we have left the city, I will be forced to incapacitate you and remove you to an alternate location myself.”

Jim stared him down, but Spock didn’t relent for a second. It was a cold day in hell when his XO forcibly asserted his greater strength since that first time, but when it came down to it, he didn’t doubt that Spock would nerve pinch him out, toss him over his shoulder like an inconvenient rag doll and get shit done his own way if he thought Jim was being unimaginably stupid.

“Fine. Fine, have it your way.”

“You are welcome to continue berating me as we evacuate the area,” Spock told him, glancing out the window, “The sun will clear the horizon in approximately twelve minutes. We must gather as many resources as we can find in the immediate area and leave the city perimeter as soon as possible.”

“Yeah? Where to, Spock?”

Spock was calmly packing a bag that had been left in the building. “Given the volatile nature of the tides, I believe we should avoid the coast, as well as the high elevations as they will likely have more unpredictable weather patterns. Therefore, the forests would be most likely to provide the best possibility of survival.”

“Oh, good. Great! We’re stuck out here on the ass end of the galaxy, and now you finally wanna go on a camping trip.”

They pushed back their barricades and aimed an arclight out, on alert for any remaining animals. Jim still fumed a bit from losing the argument, seeing Spock out here in the morning sun, breathing the open air.

“We’re gonna need food, or water, at least,” he said, trying to reclaim his authority.

“I would prefer to collect water from the river, upstream to avoid potential viral contamination,” said Spock, “Though any containers, cooking implements or clothing would prove useful.”

“I’ll check around the buildings here,” Jim muttered.

“I will search as well,” Spock gave a nod, “I will maintain a close perimeter to this area, communicator frequency four.”

“Reconvene here in ten minutes.”

He watched Spock’s retreating back before turning to one of the nearby buildings with a grimace. Spock was always better at calling the logical shots, and he knew it.

The first place he opened up turned out to be a smithy or metallurgist shop, which housed a lot of interesting tools and jewelry, but none that would be immediately useful to them. Next door was some variety of bakery or cafe, but the shelves had been stripped bare. Of course there wouldn’t be any food left. Even whatever the colonists may have preserved would be long gone in a famine. He clenched his teeth at his empty stomach, his mouth cottony. Hell, the little water left in his body wanted out, and soon.

The bakery cookware was far too large and heavy to haul around, designed for cooking bulk amounts for a lot of people. Cast iron was too heavy to carry, and glass or pottery was too easily broken. After ten minutes, all he managed to find of any use was a small aluminum pot. At least they could boil water in it.

Hearing an unusual noise outside, he turned back to the sunlight. In the square, he pulled up short and stared as a vehicle skidded to a stop beside him. It was an antique model of all-terrain crawler, a type that had been popular for planetary exploration in the decades after First Contact. He’d seen a couple in the museums on Mars and Terra Nova, but this one surprisingly still functioned.

“This vehicle’s power cell holds a charge of approximately 42%,” Spock said from behind the wheel, “However, there is a leak in the lubricant reservoir which I believe will compromise the mileage and incapacitate the vehicle in the near future.”

“Right,” Jim muttered, tossing his finds in the seat before turning on his heel and heading for a short alley nearby.

“Captain, we must evacuate the city.”

“Gimme a minute, will you?” Jim growled. Spock jumped out of the cab and followed.

“We cannot linger if we intend to utilize the available daylight.”

“The daylight can spare me a goddamn minute to take a leak!” Jim shot back over his shoulder. He pried through the suit’s complex fastenings and into his thermals, groaning with relief as he finally pissed against the wall.

Behind him, he could hear Spock shift his feet and retreat back to the mouth of the alley.

Refastening the suit, he strode back out, ignoring Spock’s indignant disapproval face as they both climbed into the car.

“I would prefer you did not expose susceptible mucus membranes until we have cleared the city, Captain,” he said.

“I don’t think you need to worry about my mucus membranes when you’re the one breathing the air, Spock. Let’s go.”

Spock pulled the vehicle around, heading down a narrow lane and to another thoroughfare, eventually coming to the eastern city gate. Once outside the walls, the wide expanse of countryside stretched before them.

It wasn’t the last of civilization, though. The city was surrounded by plowed fields. The dirt road they took led down a shallow embankment and then into a wide area alongside the river, where the colonists had cleared huge swathes of ground for cultivation.

Farm country. Jim was immanently familiar with it. Some of his best childhood memories found him running through these sorts of fields, riding the horses along to check fencing or repair irrigation lines, kissing a pretty girl for the first time behind the sleeping harvester bots. Some of his worst memories too, running and hiding amongst the dead and rotten plants, trying to keep the little ones calm and quiet when he himself was on the verge of terror, wishing on the stars to come take him far, far away. These weren’t the same vast flat plains, stretching as far as the eye could see, but he knew them nonetheless.

“Hang on,” he told Spock. “Pull over here for a sec.”

Spock brought the vehicle to a stop and Jim jumped out, kneeling to look at the half-grown, drooping crops. 

“This is corn,” he frowned, breaking a blighted stalk in his hand, the flaky white mold coating its leaves smearing on his glove, and the barely grown ears blackened and slimy with rot. He stood and pointed to the other wilted fields nearby, “Those look like potatoes, and wheat or barley over there, cotton and hemp. They planted Earth crops, but nothing native? That doesn’t make much sense. Didn't you say the plants here are edible?”

“There is little evidence the colonists attempted to cultivate native flora,” Spock said. “Perhaps they preferred the familiar.”

“No,” Jim tossed the rotten stalk to the ground, deep in thought, “Not when you’re starving to death. You’ll eat anything you can find.”

“Perhaps the local fauna makes collection dangerous,” Spock offered variables, “Or the illness compounded the famine. The sick would be unable to tend the fields or gather wild edibles.”

“But some of them weren’t sick,” Jim countered with a sigh. “They just rolled up here and put down roots. No surveys. No secondary settlements. No contingency plan in place for disasters like this. No border protection grid, no regular colony checks, no beacons, practically no contact with home at all. This whole idea was botched from the ground up.”

“One would postulate they had no other choice, knowing their ship had carried them so far that there would be no way to return,” Spock tilted his head thoughtfully, “A privatized civilian venture, launched in the intermediary years of Terran space exploration, entirely reliant upon teaching younger generations all aspects of civilization; agriculture, government, medicine, protection, and more, without ever setting foot on a planet before and knowing what dangers said planet could possess. Yet, with all the variables against them, these colonists did manage to thrive here, for a time.”

“None of it makes any sense,” Jim muttered.

“I have observed that emotions are often a key factor in the illogical choices of Humans,” Spock said, continuing when Jim looked wryly back to him, “Pride is a powerful motivator. Even among species who claim not to experience it.”

“So much for Good Fortune,” Jim snorted, though the pain of loss weighed heavily, and his laugh was humorless. “When we get home, I’m gonna ream the Admiralty about this. They dropped the ball on these people. They forgot about them.”

“I agree,” Spock said. “We should continue on, Jim.”

Once they cleared the fields, Jim tugged his mask off, finally taking a deep breath of clean fresh air and tugging the tight hood off to feel the wind in his sweaty hair. He headed off any further berating as Spock frowned at him, “It’s been beeping a filter failure at me for ten minutes.” The count was closer to two. Spock said nothing, driving on. 

Jim looked back towards the settlement, where he had insisted they stay and wait, watching it grow smaller. There it would remain, like a stormed and broken castle keep, with the names of the dead he’d scratched into the stone—a monument to the people who had once come here looking for peace. But he felt the sunlight on his face, and knew it was irrational to stay. Their ship would return, and when they did, their crew would be able to find them. They always did.

“I didn’t mean to yell at you earlier,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Apologies are unnecessary, Captain.”


	4. Chapter 4

They headed up the river, stopping only briefly to fill their pot with water and use a purification tablet from their belt kits to finally slake their thirst. Jim’s stomach still complained in hunger, but the fresh water went a long way for refreshing his body and clearing his head.

The going was fairly slow, now that the settlement roads were far behind them. The colony had built along a wide, semi-arid floodplain east of a range of craggy snow-topped mountains, running north to south with the wide river coursing down to the coast alongside them. Far in the distance, they could make out a dark green smudge of forest where the mountains curved to the east. The terrain became hills and dales covered with short grasses, scrub brush, rocky outcrops and washed out gullies they had to navigate around or through. Small animals darted and jumped away from the crawler, hiding in underbrush or scampering to burrows fast enough that they couldn’t get a closer look at them.

It was past noon when they got a good long look at some new animal life. Keeping the river on their port side, they tried to stay higher on the plains to avoid the muddy marshlands, and encountered a herd of truly enormous animals. Spock immediately slowed the vehicle, turning to give them a wide berth, but the beasts seemed quite unperturbed by their presence. They resembled what might happen if a rhino and a hedgehog got busy and had babies the size of cows. The adults had to be nearly four meters tall, almost as wide, and several tons each.

“Fascinating,” said Spock, braking to watch them.

“What?” Jim asked, watching the closest of them rip a pretty big scrub brush from the ground and chewed the whole thing up, teeth grinding trunk, twigs, and roots alike, looking back at them placidly.

“These animals show no fear of us, or our vehicle. Their behavior suggests they are the largest species in the region and suffer no predation from the colonists nor from the smaller animals we’ve encountered.”

Jim nodded in agreement, “Probably not.”

“Why, then, do they possess such defenses? It suggests attack from above. We have seen no animals thus far with the power of flight, and one capable of preying on animals of this size is highly unlikely. Studies have proven that there are limitations on flighted megafauna based on mass versus atmospheric density across all known M-class planets.”

“I dunno, about a hundred of those little bastards at the colony could be a nuisance.” Jim looked around at the divots in the ground all around the hills. “Maybe they curl up in those wallows, spikes out, and then nothing can get at them. Impervious.”

“Indeed.”

They observed for several minutes, until Spock glanced to the position of the sun and drove onward.

It was getting late in the afternoon when they cleared the spine of another broad hill and were greeted with an awful sight: a massive gauge ripped through a valley, punctuated by twisted wreckage.

“The colony’s second shuttle,” Jim stated the obvious. “Doesn’t look good, though.”

“No,” Spock agreed. “We should examine the wreckage, nonetheless. There may be survivors, or possibly supplies and survival rations.”

“Two hundred-year-old protein nibs, Spock?” Jim raised an eyebrow, receiving the same in return.

“They are formulated to remain nutritionally viable for centuries.”

“You can eat them, then,” Jim scrunched his nose, “We’re not starving yet.”

Spock drove down the embankment and around the crushed nose of the shuttle, and they exited to examine the area.

With a closer look, the chances of anyone surviving the crash seemed increasingly unlikely. The entire shuttle was battered and crumpled, like it had tumbled end over end before coming to its final resting place. Jim’s calls and raps on the hull went unanswered.

“I don’t see any tracks,” said Jim, frowning as he skirted the wreck, “No signs anyone made it out.”

The hatches of the shuttle were inoperable, but the nose had nearly separated from the fuselage, leaving a gash with enough space for a person to get through under one stabilizer. Once close, they could smell death from inside, without the barrier of their filtration masks.

“Captain,” Spock said, stopping him with a hand on his arm, “If you would remain outside and allow me to enter first.”

“Spock—”

“There may be deceased colonists within.”

Jim bristled, a little annoyed, “Obviously.”

“In the event anyone inside was infected, I would prefer to remove them myself in order to prevent your exposure, Captain. Please, allow me.”

Spock wouldn’t back down from this. Rolling his eyes, he gestured Spock ahead. “Put your mask back on, at least.”

The Vulcan did so, pulled out his arclight and cautiously entered through the gash.

With a headshake, Jim continued his examination of the outer hull. There was no scorching other than from the engine damage, so they hadn’t even made it out of atmo, and they were only about 600 kilometers away from the city. Either the colonists didn't have any idea how to fly the thing, or possibly they were shot down. Maybe both.

The abrupt sound of a scuffle, phaser fire and a shriek ripped his attention back. “Spock?”

“I am unharmed, Captain,” Spock called from inside the craft, his voice calm, “Please remain outside.”

In a few minutes, he reappeared, the body of a Human wrapped in a blanket over his shoulder, and another, long and dark in his hand, one of the scavengers. 

“There are four deceased Humans; no survivors. This man was strapped to a seat in the passenger area. Another was unrestrained, and two pilots. Decomposition of all parties approximates two to three weeks.” 

“So they were trying to get help, or maybe food, for the colony?”

“Perhaps.” He held out the body of the scavenger for Jim to see. “The animal was feeding on the bodies, and attempted to attack me.”

Jim looked the creature’s body over. Its hide was badly scarred and mangled with wounds, and it was emaciated compared the others they had seen at the compound, bones easily defined under its strange skin, the scaling rough and pale rather than sleek and smooth.

Spock looked to the sky, “The sun will fall below the horizon in approximately one hour. I propose we remain here for the night. The wreckage will provide us shelter and defense.”

“What about the mortimanges?” Jim asked a little warily, using the colonist’s name.

“Carrion feeders are opportunistic; they congregate where they smell food that will require the least energy expended. I believe the large number of animals at the colony will have gathered there from the surrounding areas. They should be many kilometers behind us for the time being.”

“Won’t they be drawn here, too?” he looked at the dead animal again. “Why wouldn’t it be with the rest?”

“An exile, perhaps,” said Spock, “If it had been ejected from its group, it would not be allowed to partake. I will remove the bodies and cremate them away from this location,” said Spock, “A fire will dissuade further predators, and if necessary, we may retreat inside the shuttle.”

While Spock took all the dead far from the crash site and set them ablaze near the river downstream, Jim gathered wood from the low-growing scrub in the area, cleared a patch of ground beneath the remaining stabilizer to light a small campfire, then took his arclight and climbed into the shuttle to assess the damage himself.

It was a pretty standard first or second generation passenger shuttle, equipped to move perhaps thirty people at a time. If he remembered his history, it was the same or a similar make that was originally used to move people back and forth between Earth and Luna, probably back when New Berlin and the Lunar Space Station was first established. 

The cockpit was nearly demolished from the impact. He could see how Spock had exerted considerable effort to free the bodies from the wreckage intact, the seating pried backward and a pair of boots left behind were they were trapped under the smashed console. Navigating through twisted metal, broken seating and storage cabinets toward the back, the engine ports smelled of ancient materials that were no longer in common use, plastics and electrical cabling melted and burnt to a crisp.

“Captain?” Spock's voice called from outside.

“Down here, I’m coming out,” he climbed awkwardly up the narrow engine access, finding it hard to maneuver due to the pitched angle of the shuttle.

Spock nodded when he surfaced, pointing his arclight toward a burst cupboard in the service area. “There is a medical kit, as well as a large supply of blankets. I have not located any food.”

Jim grinned, “So much for your protein nibs.”

Spock ignored his joke, holding up a couple of containers with lids that he must have found, sloshing the water inside, “We should take an inventory and address our wounds.”

Pooling together their resources, they weren’t entirely without necessities. Their equipment belts each provided the typical away team survival basics inside a pocket-sized crush-resistant case: a multi-tool, two dozen water purification tablets each, a three meter length of kevlar cord, a compass, a puncture and fireproof pouch, and a magnesium firestarter. The vehicle had provided a spool of para-cord and a duffle bag. They also had their belt knives, arclights, phasers and communicators, and Spock’s tricorder, though the charges on the latter items weren’t unlimited. 

The shuttle unfortunately provided very little, which illustrated how rarely the colonists must have attempted to use them since they’d arrived here. The best haul was the supply of thirty or so personal travel blankets, dark grey in color. The medical kit Spock found in the service area provided them with a small amount of sterile bandages, antiseptic salve, and a rudimentary hypo kit with some very basic med vials.

“Broad spectrum antibiotics, analgesics, and antihistamines,” Spock showed him the injector in its case and the cartridges. “There are four of each.”

“We don’t even know if the bacteria here will respond to those.”

“No. But I would prefer to have them, nonetheless. It is fortunate you are not allergic to this type,” Spock said. He unfastened his gloves, shrugged out of the top portion of his evo suit and pushed up the sleeves of his thermal shirt, exposing several punctures on his wrists and forearms. Taking a scrap of blanket that he had boiled in the pot over the fire, he cleaned away the greenish brown scabs over the wounds until they bled fresh and applied the medical salve before wrapping his arms with sterile gauze.

Jim pulled off his boots and the enclosed bottoms of the pant legs, rolling up his thermals to uncover the clusters of bites on his own legs. He tried awkwardly to get a better look at them, not easy given their location mostly on the backs of his calves and ankles.

“Do you require assistance?” asked Spock.

“Nah, I got it,” he muttered.

He scrubbed the wounds clean, smeared them with some of the salve and reached for a package of bandaging.

Once he’d pulled his boots back on, he sat back and looked up at the bright reddish purple of the Velarusan night sky. Only the brightest of stars were visible beyond the heavy glow of light from the two moons. They were even brighter tonight than the previous two as they approached half-phase. He laughed, “The big one looks like… like a big hunk of cheese. And the little one, like a meatball. God, I’m hungry.”

“The plants I have scanned thus far have been too high in cellulose for Humanoids to digest,” said Spock. “We should reach the forest by tomorrow. Ideally, there will be more variety of plant life there.”

Jim nodded. He was no stranger to going hungry, it had just been awhile.

“I did my survival rotation in Norway, an island off the northern coast. Had to swim about a quarter mile to get to a place with more than just ice and rocks. Froze my balls off, and basically lived off pine needles and bark,” he chuckled to remember it now. Starfleet’s Advanced Survival exam was particularly ruthless, shooting recruits off in pods to remote areas for four weeks with very little to work with. Nowadays, Kelvin pods were stocked with survival suits and a supply of protein nibs, but senior cadets seeking officer stations didn’t even get that in their exam run. “You?”

“Patagonia,” replied Spock, “Tierra del Fuego, in the winter.”

“Yikes.”

Spock inclined his head. “There was very little in the way of edible vegetation, and the ground too frozen to dig for roots. The twentieth day, I came upon a small deceased bird, frozen in its nest,” he paused in reflection. “It was the only time in my life that I have consumed flesh.”

Jim soberly nodded his understanding. Vulcans took a ceremonial coming-of-age journey, he knew that from Spock telling him about his own, but that had been in known territory in the Vulcan desert—he didn’t know if they’d continued the tradition now on their new unfamiliar planet. Vulcans could go a few weeks longer than Humans without food. Spock probably could have made it the entire exam without eating, and maybe that unclaimed Vulcan pride would have called it a valid choice. Instead, he’d been presented with something ordinarily revolting to him, but edible, and he’d deemed it logical to eat.

Those thirty days were meant to be harsh, especially to the uninitiated, and about two-thirds of recruits tapped out. It didn’t mean they weren’t cut out for Fleet, but generally they weren’t the sort that volunteered for away missions. There were plenty of good, qualified people who stayed on the ship and did their jobs well. But few people had the sort of firsthand experience of facing real starvation anymore, at least on most Fed planets, and Jim certainly knew even that wasn’t guaranteed. 

He sighed, closing his eyes. Here he was once again, on a troubled colony planet suffering famine and disease.

“Take rest, Captain,” said Spock, “I will keep watch.”

He hummed in response, his thoughts back on their ship. The Kelvin pods. So named because of the number of people his dad hadn’t managed to save all those years ago. Back then, people had to make their way to shuttle bays in a panic, and even if you did get to one, some of those shuttles had been unaccounted for, their occupants never recovered. The celebrated hero of the Kelvin may have saved 800 lives, but he’d also lost 97. It was 97 too many for those families, including his own.

There were nights when his dreams had him watching his ship fall away before his eyes above Altamid, watching her die a devastating, fiery death, and knowing so many of her crew went down with her. On the worst nights, though, it wasn’t a Kelvin Pod door—it was the door in Engineering, with Spock on the other side, falling into space and away from him.

He opened his eyes again to find Spock right there beside him, the firelight flickering in his dark eyes. When he’d been in that warp core airlock, and he knew he was going to die, he’d found enormous comfort in not being alone. At least he’d had Spock there with him.

Spock’s seemed to feel his gaze, turning to him. “Are you well, Captain?” he asked.

“Yeah. I’m good, Spock,” Jim said. “Just glad you’re here.”

Spock tilted his head. “Circumstances aside, I share your sentiment.”

 

Jim slept fitfully, kept awake by a now gnawing hunger, as well as the inherent danger of an unfamiliar place. They broke camp quickly at first light and continued their way north, with Jim at the wheel this time. 

The terrain progressed upward from the arid lowlands to vast plains, thick with tall colorful grasses and wildflowers. They come upon more herds of animals, the huge spike-backs as well as other species that were smaller, but still formidable, including a massive herd of six-horned creatures that nearly stampeded when the vehicle appeared, honking alerts and stamping their feet while they drove slowly around them. Spock estimated the herd to be a thousand strong at least.

The vehicle managed to take them nearly 900 kilometers before finally sputtering to a halt. The leaky lubricant had surprisingly held out, but the power cell had dropped into low single digits, until it refused to climb another hill.

“I guess we’re walking from here,” sighed Jim. They gathered everything they could carry, the bulk of which was their water containers and the blankets from the shuttle—they’d taken as many as they could carry, split between them, tightly rolled together and strapped to their packs—the medkit, and their Starfleet equipment.

A breeze blew up along the mountains, cool and fresh, and the forest was not far off, but it was a gradual uphill climb. According to the tricorder, they had gained more than 600 meters above sea level.

By the time they reached the trees it was mid-afternoon, and the going became markedly slower. Still following the winding river’s edge, they had to navigate around rocky crags, thick viney underbrush and thorny brambles. The trees were varied in species, some tall and thin with scaly bark and others with far spreading roots that caught their toes and huge sprawling canopies above. Plus, with so much more varied plant life, Spock kept the tricorder at hand, scanning everything they encountered.

And there were now many more animals. Squawks and clicks, song-like calls and howls, chuckles and caws sounded from every direction. The whole forest moved, climbed, and scurried all around them. Small, long bodied creatures skittered up and down trees. Tiny insect-sized ones flitted from branch to branch and crawled underfoot in the thick undergrowth. There were jumpers and a flew gliders, but nothing appeared to be possessed of real wings or true flight.

They startled a pair of stocky animals, similar to a small pig, but for the turtle-like head, thin legs and lizard-like tails as they ran away. They were mid-sized, perhaps 30 kilos, the first evidence that animals larger than the mortimanges were around in the forest as well. They made a point to stop and check the setting and charge of their phasers. They had yet to encounter a predator, but it wouldn’t hurt to be cautious.

“Captain,” Spock called from ahead as he freed his boot from another tangle of vines and roots. When he caught up, Spock was cutting a couple of shriveled, spiky pods hanging from a tree, “The tricorder indicates this fruit may be edible.”

Jim eagerly watched as Spock used his knife to pierce through the thick, leathery skin, slicing the pod in half, then smelling and scanning the contents. The flesh was sort of desiccated, peachy-colored and surrounding a load of dried up seeds that scattered at their feet.

“The tricorder detects no undigestible compounds or toxins in the endosperm, the arils or the seeds. This fruit is several months old, but there is no rot detected. There are dried husks on the ground as well. I would liken it to the Terran coconut in that respect. The outer skin keeps the endosperm viable during most phases of its growth throughout the planetary year.”

“Okay,” said a distracted Jim, licking his lips, “So can we eat it?”

Spock scraped out some of the flesh with his knife, placing it in his mouth, eyebrows rising, “The taste is pleasant.”

He cut another chunk and held it out. Jim shoved it into his mouth, eyes going wide as he chewed. It was sweet and fibrous, sticking to his teeth. “It’s good!”

Swinging off their packs, they indulged in half a pod each before Spock insisted they wait to eat more and assess any potential side effects. But it gave them renewed energy to continue on. He cut down more to take with them, scanning and collecting a further three types of fruit, mushrooms and tubers that they could eat before the sun approached the horizon.

All too soon, it was time to make camp again. They cleared a patch of ground and lit a fire between the big buttressed roots of a massive tree. As they used their small pot to boil tubers, the sky dimmed and the mood of the forest changed.

The cacophony of clicks and calls fell quiet, and in the orange-violet moon glow only glancing through the forest canopy, and the shadows took on the same strange abyssal depth they had in the colony, on a much larger scale. There was a constant rustling in the undergrowth, and with the wind blowing through, the forest remained alive with movement all around them, making it nearly impossible to single anything out.

Sitting with their backs to the high tree roots, Spock appeared to be on alert, keeping his phaser ready at hand. Jim was on edge just knowing the Vulcan’s senses were far better than his own. “Are you hearing anything?”

“Yes,” said Spock. 

“What is it?” he looked around with his eyes as wide as he could make them.

“Unclear. I believe there are one or more animals of considerable size just outside the perimeter of the firelight.”

“Great. That’s great,” said Jim, clicking on his arclight to scan the underbrush. Something large growled and moved, but he still couldn’t make it out.

“I do not believe they will come any closer, Captain,” said Spock.

“Why’s that?”

“I would hypothesize that a majority of this planet’s nocturnal animals, like the mortimanges, are sensitive to certain spectrums of light,” Spock replied, “Our arclights produce light primarily on the blue and ultraviolet spectrum. This greatly disturbs them, but light produced by fire is vastly more intense.”

“Most animals have an instinctive fear of fire, no matter what planet we’re on,” Jim offered.

“Yes,” Spock nodded, “Fire generates heat and also infrared light; a far larger part of the spectrum than our Humanoid eyes can detect. This planet’s atmosphere may allow an abundance of infrared light from Velarus to penetrate during the day, and many nights due to reflected light from the moons. The moons are currently waxing, which in theory will only decrease the animals’ interest in us during the night as they seek to avoid it.”

“I hope you’re right about that,” Jim clicked off his arclight. “I don’t think we’ll be getting any sleep tonight.”

“In the future, it may be prudent to seek a campsite with both more exposure to the moonlight, but solid in structure. A rock alcove facing the moons’ path, if possible.” 

Jim put his light away and gave a heavy, tired sigh, scrubbing at his eyes.

“Are you well, Captain?”

“You keep asking me that.”

“We were exposed to a virus, either via air or introduced when animals which had been feeding on infected corpses attacked us,” said Spock, “I simply wish to ascertain that you are not beginning to feel ill.”

“I don’t feel sick, Spock. I’ll let you know if I do,” Jim replied, a little sardonically, “Are _you_ well?”

Spock inclined his head, “I am.”

“I don’t think you’ve slept at all since we’ve been here,” he said, “And don’t give me that ‘I can go forever without it’ bullshit.”

“I am able to enter a light meditative state while remaining alert.”

“Does it help?” he asked, “Honestly.”

“It allows me to order my mind to some degree,” Spock conceded, “But full meditation or 4.6 hours of uninterrupted sleep would admittedly be more beneficial.”

Jim hunkered down against the tall flange of the tree root at his back, flicking through the frequencies on his communicator. They’d been here now for more than 90 hours, and he’d picked up nothing, not since he’d ordered the _Enterprise_ to retreat. He was wary of sending anything out or rigging up a rescue beacon, lest they attract the attention of whoever had attacked the ship or the colony. He had to have faith their crew would come back for them when it was safe. They all knew the protocol. Starfleet didn’t leave people behind.

“We’ve never been left anywhere for more than… what, a week or so?”

“The away team was stranded on the third moon of Sered VIII, for a period of twelve days, eighteen hours and twenty-five minutes,” Spock stated. “The _Enterprise_ returned after we had obtained a replacement matter convertor assembly as the original was damaged by the system’s unpredictable magnetic asteroid field.”

“Oh yeah,” Jim hazarded a grin. That time it had been him, Chekov and a few Science officers, and hadn’t been a hardship in the least, considering that the environment was a paradise and natives treated them all like gods. Spock had seemed exceptionally put out that nobody really wanted to leave.

Still, this was not a planet populated by primitive yet adoring people. He knew he had to start facing the real possibility that they might be stuck here for awhile.

“Tomorrow, we’ll look for somewhere to set up a base camp,” he said.

 

In the morning, Jim woke to Spock’s gentle shake of his shoulder, surprised that he’d slept at all.

They split a sort of gourd that had the oily, fatty texture of avocado but tasted like roasted marshmallows, and continued to make their way upriver. 

Spock was in full-out nerd mode, scanning everything, commenting on the tri-symmetry of this plant or the volcanic nature of that stone. Jim couldn’t say he didn’t enjoy this part, anytime they were out exploring a new planet and letting his science people do their science thing, Spock chief among them all. He’d counted eight ‘fascinating’s so far this morning.

They explored for most of the day, always staying within visual distance of each other, though Spock’s theory on the wildlife seemed to prove true, with the majority of the daytime animals scurrying away from them, even some that were reasonably large. Jim had a full stomach and his spirits were high, despite lingering questions. 

Fruits, leaves, berries, seeds, roots and fungi had all scanned as safe to eat, and none of it showed any signs of the rot that had affected the colony’s Earth crops. They’d collected enough to snack on as they walked, and there was plenty more to be had, everywhere. Why didn’t the colonists just come out here to gather food? They had ground transportation, and it had taken the pair of them just a couple of days to get out here. Had they just assumed the blight that affected their crops had done the same to the indigenous foods? Why had it only affected the Terran plants? Or was it the animals they feared? The wildlife in the nighttime was a concern, but they were only two men with a fire, and they’d passed the nights out here all right. Jim just couldn’t make sense of it.

In early afternoon, they had hiked into the mountain foothills, broken by rocky cliffs of uplifted granite. The river split into two sources here, one going up into the high snowy peaks of the west, while the other curved, stemming from a second range to the northeast. They opted to follow the fork on the nearest side rather than risk a treacherous crossing.

Rounding a large rock outcrop, they heard a waterfall before encountering it, dropping roughly eight meters from above and splashing into a deep, wide pool before rushing down the hill they’d just climbed.

“Oh man,” Jim grinned, immediately dropping his pack and wrestling with the fastenings of his evo suit.

“Captain—”

“Shush,” he told his First preemptively, letting the evo suit hang from his hips while he shrugged out of his thermal shirt beneath, “I haven’t had a shower in four days, Spock. I stink like a Tellarite yak.” He kicked out of his boots, wriggled out of both sets of pants to his skivvies, gauging the depth for a minute before taking a wild running leap off the rocky ledge and tucking up his legs in a cannonball to make a big splash.

Surfacing with a shrieking whoop, he laughed maniacally as he treaded water, spotting Spock on the rocky ledge above him. “Fuck, it’s freezing!”

He gave his armpits and scalp a cursory scrub and dove again, scanning the clear depths briefly before his eyeballs protested the cold and he swam to the edge to climb out. Shaking his head like a dog, he grinned wide with chattering teeth at the long-suffering look from his commander, who held one of the blankets out to him.

“This river is most likely fed by glacial run-off,” he was informed, Spock reading off the tricorder, “The current temperature of this pool is 10.56 degrees.”

“Ya think?” Jim laughed, shivering as he rubbed at his hair with the blanket and reached for his clothes. Still, he felt refreshed and at least a little bit cleaner for it.

Back in his thermals, he did some push-ups to get his blood pumping, then looked around the area as he hopped up and down. “This is a nice place, though, right? We should look around here for a campsite.”

“I agree,” said Spock, “It would be best to locate a site before nightfall.”

He quickly warmed back up with the sun on his shoulders as they split up to explore the wider area near the pool. The forest at this altitude had again changed to one of less density and tangle, the trees reaching up tall, but with sparser foliage, allowing dappled sunlight to the leaf littered floor. Jim kept a big granite cliff to his left, scanning up and down the slope. Pushing on to where a swath of land was clear of trees like a landslide appeared to have fallen down the hill over time, he found what he was looking for. He did a quick sweep to be sure it was clear, and then called for Spock.

“What do you think?” Jim grinned, spreading his arms in display as Spock entered the space. The cavern was bigger than the Observation Deck, at least twelve meters across and half as high, with a large opening going deep into the mountain towards the back. He gave a holler, listening to his voice reverberate deep under the ground with a smile. “It goes back and then down pretty far, I think. It’d be interesting to explore down there and see how deep it goes.”

“We do not possess rope or any other appropriate safety gear for climbing within extensive cave systems.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jim hemmed. “But it’s good, right? It’s dry, there’s some evidence of animal activity, but it looks old, and once we get a fire going in here, they won’t come back. It’s great.” He picked up an odd diamond-shaped flake of stone from the ground, about the size of a dinner plate. The cave floor was littered with them in various sizes, all with a smoky, slightly transparent hue like a micah or obsidian. “This is kind of weird, right?”

Spock gave the cave another look from top to bottom and side to side, then squared his stance. “Might I propose an alternative location?”

That was a no, then. Jim sighed, “Sure, lead on.”

Spock took him half a kilometer along the ridge, arriving at a much smaller crevice in the side of the cliff. This cave, more of a grotto, was roughly triangular in shape and about four meters at its widest point, and just tall enough to stand comfortably in the apex. There was an elevated shelf of stone on the wider side, opposite a crack that seemed to go all the way up to the top of the cliffside. Toward the back, there was a sound of trickling water, dripping down the rock and draining through tiny cracks and crevices at the back, which probably connected to the same larger cave system deep inside the mountain. There was even a reasonably flat clearing in front of the cave before the ground sloped slightly downward into the forest.

“A trench fire placed against this wall would receive ample airflow, as well as ventilate smoke up through the fissure,” Spock gave his pitch with all the confidence of a presentation before the Admiralty. “It would easily heat the space enough to accommodate two persons. There is a fresh water flow readily available at the rear which I have scanned—it is a natural spring, filtered through the rock and requires no further purification. We are also 1.1 kilometers from the waterfall pool we encountered earlier. The raised surface would be ideal for a sleeping platform. The area in front of the cave will provide excellent moonlight exposure during the night, and if necessary, we can construct a screen on the outer wall to further protect from wind and animals. Additionally, there is an easily traversed path to the top of the cliff, which overlooks the entire valley area. I believe this cave is an ideal location to establish our base.”

Before Spock finished making his case, Jim knew he was overruled. Yes, his cave was big and impressive, but unnecessarily so. Spock was, as ever, the pragmatist between them. “Okay. Sounds good.”

Spock set his pack on the rock platform, removing the bundle of blankets from it. “I believe we should gather resources and make ready for the evening. I estimate we have two hours to prepare before sunset.”

“I’ll gather some firewood.”

 

As the night fell, Jim was glad to say they were in a far better place than they’d been the few previous nights. They cleaned their bite wounds again, Spock insisting on examining Jim’s to be certain they weren’t becoming infected. They ate from what the forest provided, sitting in front of their claimed cave on a pair of logs with a fire crackling between them. The moons shone bright and high, and the darker shadows in the forest were a comfortable distance away. The last time they had been stranded had felt more dangerous than this.

But then, the last time they had been stranded had been different. He’d known exactly where his ship was, it had been in pieces in front of him. They had been lucky that the Kelvin pods had mostly landed in reasonable proximity to each other, and they had been even luckier to come across Jaylah and the _Franklin_.

“You know, Bones told me how things were on Altamid,” Jim said as he finished off a handful of the tangy tetrahedron-shaped blue berries that tasted sort of like lemon drops, glancing over at Spock. “He told me how you were.”

“I do not understand your query.”

“Sure you do. You smiled, Spock,” Jim said, “He said you smiled. And you laughed.” He’d also said Spock cried, but Jim knew all about that and wasn’t going to bring it up. The idea of Spock smiling and laughing, though… he’d seen the Elder Spock’s subtle version of it, but it wasn’t the same. But what he wouldn’t give to see a Vulcan—this Vulcan—laughing for himself.

Instead, his own Spock was doing his level best not to emote at all, staring at the fire.

“Not gonna do it for me though, hm?”

“Is our present situation one in which I should express humor?” Spock retorted.

Jim opened and then closed his mouth with a deferring shrug. “I dunno. We’re stuck on a backwoods planet in the middle of nowhere, but we’ve got food, shelter, a fire. Kinda seems like we could be on shore leave… minus the whole dead colony and no idea what’s happened to the ship issue,” he frowned to think of that once again, never really far from his thoughts.

“While I do realize that Humans use humor to ease distress, it is not an activity at which I excel,” Spock said, relaxing slightly, “On Altamid, I was injured and emotionally compromised by news of the death of my counterpart. My controls had slipped due to a lack of ability to meditate. It was unacceptable. I will speak to Dr. McCoy; perhaps you are correct that his behavior overreaches the established boundaries of medical confidence.”

“Unacceptable,” Jim huffed, “Spock, Bones makes jokes and acts like a brick, but you know he’s the biggest softie on the ship. And anyway, I don’t know that it counted. Being visibly emotional isn’t a failure, especially among friends.”

“I have come to realize this,” Spock said, “However, even among those I trust, it is difficult to put aside a lifetime of conditioning. We could do with some of Leonard’s levity in our present situation.”

“Nah, he’d just be complaining,” Jim laughed and shook his head. He wiped his sticky hand on his pant leg, pulling his knees up to his chest as he looked up to the orange-red sky. They were still speaking as though the ship could return for them at any moment, but he couldn’t shake the fear that his crew was in far worse shape than they were. “I hope they’re okay up there.”


	5. Chapter 5

“They’re hailing us!” cried Uhura.

“About bloody time they’re hailing instead of shooting!” said Scotty, moving from the Engineer’s station to the Captain’s chair, “Onscreen.”

A Romulan Commander appeared on the viewscreen, looking smug, “You are a very long way from home, Federation.”

“I’m Captain Montgomery Scott of the USS _Enterprise_ ,” said Scotty. “Is there any particular reason you’re so intent on keeping us from providing medical aid to one of our colonies in distress?”

“Certainly,” she answered, “We have already provided your colony with aid.”

“You did, did you?” McCoy growled from Scotty’s shoulder, “I guess that explains why they were lined up and executed down there?”

“You abandoned your people, Human. Unlike you and our emotionless Federation kin, we Romulans cannot stand by and bear to witness such pain and suffering. Besides,” her brow went up, “You have no authority in this sector.”

“Neither do you,” growled McCoy. “This sector is unclaimed, but that Federation colony has existed on that planet for over a century, and we have a duty to our citizens.”

“It appears that you do not. According to our latest scans, what remained of the Human colony has, regrettably, succumbed.”

“Because you murdered them!” spat the doctor. “And who was that other ship, anyway? How did they appear out of thin air?”

“Do you always allow your Second to speak for you, Captain?” the Commander observed with amusement, ignoring the question. “Mine would be punished for such insubordination.”

“Madam,” Scotty tried, “If… if the colony itself cannae be helped any longer, I understand. However, we left a party of officers on the planet, just prior to our… ongoing disagreement up here, these past few days. If what you say is true, and the colony is beyond help, then our only intention now will be to collect the remainder of our party and go.”

“That is interesting,” said the Commander, tilting her head, “Unfortunately, the sickness there is particularly virulent. Our final scans of the colony 40 hours ago showed there are no Humans left there at all.” She gave a mockingly sympathetic shrug, “Sorry.”

The chill the swept over the bridge at that was palpable. “If you’ve killed Starfleet officers, believe you me, there will be hell to pay,” McCoy seethed through his teeth.

“You are threatening us?” smirked the Romulan Commander, “Your Federation ship has done no lasting damage to ours, Human. You are outnumbered, outgunned, and it seems, out of options.”

“We are a scientific vessel, not a military one,” said Scotty.

“That is interesting, given your scientific vessel is equipped with ineffective yet military grade weapons.”

“We have weapons for defense, of course, but we dinnae come out looking to fight,” Scotty said, “Speaking of weapons, would you introduce us to your new friends in that fancy ship? We’ve not seen its like before.”

“I think not,” she answered shortly, “They know of your Federation and have little interest in it.”

“What do they want? Perhaps we have mutual interests.”

The Romulan Commander laughed knowingly, “You Humans. You so willingly play the foil of friendliness. Even the Vulcans fell for it, so childlike you are to them. We Romulans have learned otherwise.”

“Madam, we wish nothing more than to be certain our colony and our team are…” Scotty stuttered, letting go a sigh, “If you would allow us to… to collect our dead from the planet? Those men and women have families who would mourn them.”

“Bodies are merely vessels, Human, and your species has no katra to salvage,” the Commander smiled coldly, “But we Romulans are not so uncaring as our Federation kin. As a token of our generosity, we will provide you escort to the border of our Empire with the Klingons, that you may return to the business of lording over much busier parts of the galaxy. This sector is quite unimportant to you now.”

Scotty chewed his lip and blinked at the screen. 

“Or, if you wish, we may continue target practice, which does not appear to be in your favor. I tire of this conversation. You have one quarter of your Federation hour to make your choice.” The screen went dark.

“Are we in range of our beacon yet?” barked Scotty, getting up and heading to the Ready Room.

“Within 2.3 parsecs, sir.”

“Where are you going?” asked McCoy, following him.

“To call the bloody Admiralty.”

  


“You have your orders, Acting Captain Scott.”

“Now wait just a damn minute, Admiral,” spat McCoy, standing behind Scotty’s chair in the Ready Room, “We left eight Starfleet officers down on that planet, including Captain Kirk and Commander Spock!”

“Who shouldn’t have been down there together anyway,” Komack shook his jowls, “Protocol those two still can’t manage to follow.”

“Jim only brought Spock down because he sent me back to find a medical solution—which I did,” growled McCoy, “Those sick people are Federation citizens, Admiral, they’re under our jurisdiction, and I’m telling you, I can fix this thing with a simple vaccine!”

“The Romulans told you there’s no one left.”

“You’ll take the word of a Romulan?” said McCoy. “Our people are still down there!”

“Your own report said what was left of the colonists were on death’s door, Doctor,” said the Admiral, “Sit down. You’re way out of line.”

McCoy remained standing, fuming from behind Scotty’s shoulder. 

“But Admiral, you’re telling us to just leave Kirk and Spock out here?” gaped Scotty. “All due respect, we’re the only ship on this side o’ Beta to mount a rescue. It’s clear that—”

“What is clear, Acting Captain, is that you were run off by an unknown ship with superior tech, and since then, you’ve been tailed by Romulans who may well be in league with said unknowns preventing you from returning,” the Admiral tilted his head. “Do _you_ think you can get back to that planet and get your men?”

Scotty shifted in his chair nervously, “Well no, not yet, but if we give it a wee bit more time—”

“You don’t have more time,” Komack shot back. “Your ship is limping. You’re being watched by known and unknown adversaries. You’ve gone and attracted their attention, which is exactly what we told you people _not_ to do over there. Your mission is aborted. Your orders are to return to Fed space until we can figure out how to fix this clusterfuck you started, and hope it doesn’t get any worse than it already is.”

“And come back with reinforcements, I assume,” said McCoy. 

“You have your orders. Do it. Komack out.”

“Conniving sanctimonious son-of-a-bitch,” McCoy snarled at the darkened screen, “He’s had it in for Jim since the day we went up.”

Scotty sighed, hitting the comm button on the desk, “Sulu and Uhura to Cap’s Ready Room.”

Uhura took only a glance at both of their faces as she entered to grasp the gist of it. “They’re pulling us back?”

“Aye,” Scotty rubbed his face with both hands.

“But we can’t leave Jim and Spock and the rest of the team behind!”

“I agree,” Scotty said, his expression drawn, “But at the moment, I dinnae see how we can mount a rescue with those buggers blocking our every path. And now we’ve been ordered to return to Fed space, and take the Romulans’ offer of escort to be quick about it.”

“Yeah, as if a Romulan escort is gonna see us home safe,” McCoy grumbled.

“We’ve never seen tech like that other ship before,” Sulu rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, “They crawled right up our ass, and even Spock and Chekov didn’t see them on the scans.”

“They dropped in out of nowhere, almost like Nero did.”

“No, it wasn’t like Nero,” Sulu shook his head, “It was far more controlled.”

“The only thing that matters right now is that we get our guys back,” said Uhura, turning from them back to Scotty, her face hard.

“We have our orders,” Scotty shook his head, clearly unhappy. “Right now, we cannae even be sure if they’re alive. I’m asking the lot of ye. Do we have any ideas to get back there?”

Sulu huffed, shaking his head, “Not in the shape we’re in, with this many Birds-Of-Prey around.”

“Three?” scoffed McCoy. 

Sulu looked levelly back, “Three is more than enough, plus the back-up of that unknown ship. We couldn’t handle them all at 100%, so we’re sitting ducks as we are now.”

“ _Captain,_ ” Chekov’s voice came down the comm, “ _One of the Romulan ships has destroyed our beacon!”_

“Shite,” sighed Scotty.

“Aren't your people on the repairs down there?” McCoy asked him.

“They’re doing the best they can. We’ve got one nacelle operating at 64%, damaged phaser array, and shields are barely holding at 50%—and I’m not down there in her belly, putting her back together myself,” Scotty reached out to put a hand on the bulkhead, as if gentling a pet, “I hate not havin’ my own two eyes and hands on her.”

“And I’ve got casualties from these last two dogfights in my Sickbay that I can’t take care of if I’m stuck up here playing second fiddle to you,” grumbled Leonard.

“The Romulan’s main objective is to separate us from the planet,” Uhura parsed aloud, pacing, “They’ll only escort us to the Romulan-Klingon Border if we stand down and comply, and that escort probably ends once we get there, then I bet we’ll be fending for ourselves back through,” she huffed, crossing her arms and narrowing her eyes, “These Romulans are different, though.”

“How?”

“They’re speaking the rarest of the dialects, and the inflections are softer than I’ve heard before. The physical features were different too. Most Romulans have two brow ridges, these only had one.”

“What does that mean for us?” asked McCoy.

“The Romulans we’re used to would certainly know who commands the _Enterprise_ , and it isn’t you two. So far, they don’t seem to know we’re without our usual command team; they didn’t question it. Maybe it’s a separate group or faction operating out here. And if that’s true, then it’s our only advantage,” said Uhura, “They also said there were no Humans left at the colony, but Spock isn’t Human, and he went down with Lieutenant Gu’on.”

“What are you saying, lass? That they have our lads captive?”

“No. Listen, they want that planet, for whatever reason, so we have to assume they’ll go back. When we last spoke to the captain a few days ago, he ordered our retreat, right?” Uhura spoke intently. “So if they knew we were under attack, they’d hunker down, shelter in place until rescue comes.”

“That’s the protocol. Unless where they were was unsafe,” nodded Sulu, “Then they’d leave, find a safe place to hide elsewhere.”

“Then if we assume the Romulans went down there to see if they had finished the off the colony, then the Captain and Spock would have made a run for it. I think they only scanned the colony itself, not beyond its borders.”

“Or they did, and they’ve been captured, or—”

“Don’t say it,” Uhura snapped, glaring at Sulu, who dropped his eyes. She turned back to Scotty, “Romulans are proud, they’re hotheaded, they’re xenophobic, and who do they hate more than anyone else? Vulcans. You heard her, she mentioned Vulcans three times in the space of a few minutes with a sneer on her face. If they had captured one, even if they didn’t know who he was, they’d want to gloat about it. And these Romulans didn’t. I don’t think they have our Vulcan, or our Captain. And if they don’t? Then our guys are still down there, maybe not at the colony, but somewhere. Kirk and Spock are alive.”

They all went silent for several tense minutes, eyes on the display showing their assailants in the way of their course. The mysterious ship that had initially attacked them in the planet’s orbit had vanished again, though it had been spotted briefly a few times, each time they tried to return to the Velarus system over the past few days. But it had been the Romulans that chased them out of the system, back toward their last beacon, now destroyed and cutting them off from the Fleet once again.

“The virus shouldn’t be a threat to them, at least I know that much,” McCoy sighed heavily, rounding the desk to join the others. “It’s heavily mutated, but our officers have been routinely vaccinated against most of the known strains. They ought to have enough of an immune resistance to it if they’re exposed.”

“Jim and Spock are resourceful enough,” nodded Sulu, “If they can find food and water, they can survive down there for a while. If the pair of them can keep themselves and rest of the team alive, and we can come back through in a couple of months with a fleet, I’m confident they’ll still be there.”

“Months?” said Uhura.

“That’s how long it will take us to get through the Neutral Zone and come back, and that’s _if_ we can convince the Admiralty on an expedited turnaround,” Sulu made a face, “And you know the speed of bureaucracy better than I do.”

“I dinnae think we have a choice. It’s that or stay here getting holes blown in us, and then it’s likely our lads won’t have anyone in their corner. I’m sorry,” sighed Scotty, mopping his brow. He waved his hand in vague dismissal, “Ach, alright then, off wi’ ya.”

“We’re gonna come back with reinforcements,” Sulu said again with conviction.

“We damn well better,” said Leonard, giving Sulu’s shoulder a squeeze, looking back, “Right, Acting Captain?”

“I’ll do what I can,” said Scotty, tipping both hands up placatingly. “I’ll appeal to Barnett, or Fitzpatrick.”

“And Ambassador Sarek,” said Uhura.

“I’ll talk to some of the other captains and commodores,” said Sulu, “Paris likes Jim well enough, she’s got lots of friends high up.”

“The lot of you are assuming we’ll survive the trip,” scowled McCoy. “We’ve got to get back through the damn Neutral Zone first.”

The pair of them left, the door to the Bridge sliding closed behind them. Scott sighed heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose and muttering under his breath. Uhura stood her ground, “Permission to scan for any transmissions that may be relevant to our men, sir.”

“Can ye do it without alerting our escort?”

“Of course.”

“Then by all means, I cannae stop ye,” Scotty said, softening, “I’m no’ givin’ up on ‘em, lass. I cannae abide leaving them behind either. But I dinnae see any way ‘round it just now. Maybe after things calm down a bit, and we get our lady back in fighting shape…”

Uhura swallowed and nodded, but her chin was up and her face determined. She stalked back out to her station and got to work writing an encrypted scanning program. “We’re going to get them back,” she muttered to herself, “One way or another.”


	6. Chapter 6

Jim woke slowly, groaning at the ache in his back. He sat up on the hard rock platform in the cave, cushioned only with tree fronds that were quickly drying out and crumbling under a few layers of blankets. The cushy life of a captain had made him soft—spending a year out of the chair during the rebuild, mostly making appearances at diplomatic events and then almost another meandering lazily all this way. Bones had been on his ass about the few pounds he’d gained.

The fires were banked, and the forest alive with the clicks and chatters of the morning wildlife. He yawned hugely, washed his mouth out with a swish of water and took the craggy path up to the top of the cliff, where Spock could usually be found in the early hours. He’d probably been awake for awhile now.

He paused, watching the Vulcan as he moved through suus mahna forms, with a long, straight stick in the place of a lirpa. He’d seen him do this before, in the gym on the ship. He knew his XO was a formidable opponent at hand-to-hand and with primitive weapons, having sparred with him on several occasions over the years. The crew got a hell of a kick out of it.

He stretched a bit himself, wincing at all the complaints in his spine. “I think we need to figure out a better way to pad the bed.”

“Yes,” agreed Spock, without breaking form, “You were very mobile last night.”

Jim looked away, to where the granite cliff top merged into a small clearing of grass opposite the precipice, and the foothills began to rise upward, with clouds of morning fog gathered in the trees at higher elevations. They hadn’t spoken much about sharing the platform, other than Jim choosing the side closest to the wall, logically because Spock slept less and would rise early. The space was large enough for both of them, though Jim had surely bothered him with all his tossing during the night.

“Maybe we could figure out a way to sew some blankets together and stuff it with grass or something,” he suggested.

“That is a good idea,” said Spock.

Looking down from the top of the cliff, they could see just over most of the trees covering the forested hills below, down to the vast plains they’d traveled through to get out here. They couldn’t see the colony from this far away, but the view was sprawling, a couple hundred kilometers on a clear day. Surely they would see anything coming from that direction.

They had been on the planet now for well over a week, with still no word from the _Enterprise_. Jim checked the communicator frequencies twice a day, hoping that Uhura had left them a message, or that they might be up there, near enough to hear him send a quick encrypted blip, but he got nothing.

Spock finished his routine. “Have you eaten?”

Jim shook his head, following Spock back down where they ate the cold remains last night’s meal of root vegetables that tasted like pecan pie. There was a shrub Spock had discovered with mild antiseptic qualities, from which green twigs could be cut and the ends chewed to a fibrous brush to clean their teeth, or they could be boiled to steep like a tea to swish through the mouth. It tasted a little like cinnamon, and if they were at the camp, a little ash from the fire was good for a scrub. It was certainly better than nothing.

Then they set out. Their days were mostly spent exploring an ever widening area around the camp, gathering any food, firewood or other materials they discovered that might prove useful, committing the surrounding area to memory and learning animal behaviors and patterns. 

The pair of them certainly weren’t going hungry. There were only a few things Spock told Jim he needed to avoid because of his allergies, most of which were nuts, seeds and a few of the fruits. It had Jim wondering again why the colonists didn’t simply take to the woods to gather food when the famine struck. He still kept an eye out for any sign of the mold and rot that had afflicted the Earth crops, but he’d seen nothing like that out here.

The forest had an abundance of animals. The largest they had seen so far at this altitude were quiet, deer-sized herbivores that slipped delicately through the ferny woods in small family groups, munching on the tenderest new leaves and shoots with prehensile tongues. They resembled sleek greyhounds with large eyes and no fur, like most of the animals here. Instead their hides rippled with a covering that was less a chitinous lizard-like scale and more like a very primitive feather, flexible and rubbery, though not easily shed, and covering a layer of cottony down or undercoat fluff. Some of it gathered in tufts on the thorny bushes and spiny bark of the trees. If Jim could gather enough of it, maybe it would be good for stuffing the mattress. It would take an awful lot of it, though. An hours’ worth of picking in the briars only garnered him a large handful, so it didn’t seem quite worth his trouble.

Other creatures were a variety of shapes and sizes, short and fat, long and skinny, all with some form of those soft scales in mostly brown and green and grey patterns, camouflaging them in the vegetation, or with spots of bright colors here and there.

“Many of the species we have encountered are similar to Terran therapsids and cynodonts,” Spock said quietly as they observed a group of creatures in a clearing. At Jim’s curious look, he expanded, “Proto-mammalian creatures which were widespread in the late Permian era of your planet’s evolution. They had developed jaws and dentition structured for the ability to chew food while breathing, quadrupedal legs upright beneath the body, and were warm-blooded. There were similar animals in Vulcan’s early history; many biodiverse planets with carbon-based life undergo similar evolutionary paths.”

The ones they saw repeatedly earned names. If Jim named it, most often it was whatever popped into his head on observation, like Pig-Thing or Squirrel-Toad. Spock’s were much prettier, opting to name them with touches of the colonist’s languages or scientific nomenclature.

Later in the afternoon when they’d returned to camp, Jim remembered his idea about the mattress, and climbed back up the narrow path to the cliff top. He set to gathering the grass in the clearing there, grabbing a handful and sawing it off at the ground level with his knife, then tying it into bundles. He figured maybe three or four thick layers, each one laid perpendicular to the last between a couple of layers of blankets had to be better than just dusty, dried-up leaves for padding.

He had a good amount bundled up in a pile and was working on cutting more before the sun went down, when he heard Spock call from below.

“Up here,” he yelled as he worked, hearing Spock’s footsteps coming up the path.

“Captain,” his calm monotone said, “Cease your work.”

“Yeah, hang on,” he said, still bent over and hacking at a handful, his knife already dulled by the work. “I think a couple more bundles will be about enough.”

“Captain. Stop immediately. Do not make a sudden movement.”

He looked back at Spock curiously, and then to the phaser in his hand, then followed his first officer’s steady gaze behind him. Nearly falling over in trying to quell his aborted flight reflex, he grabbed for his own phaser at his belt. At the top of the grassy hill, not fifteen meters away was a very large, very not friendly-looking animal. The bottom dropped out of his gut at the clear, cold realization that he was almost certainly on the menu of this thing. He raised his phaser and aimed.

“No, Captain,” Spock voice said, closer now, putting a hand on his arm. “I would advise against antagonizing it.”

The sun shone out clearly at the edge of the mountain peaks over its back, still a good twenty minutes before it would drop below the horizon. The creature stood just beyond at the tree line, unmoving, just watching them. It was huge, at least 800 kilos, with massive shoulders like a buffalo, powerful looking legs and a long, thick tail, like many of the animals here. The head, though, was something else. It was bulky, long and full of sharp teeth, like the mortimanges, but on steroids. Some stuck out like tusks, and its heavy jaws and skull featured blunt protrusions, a cross between maybe a crocodile and a warthog from hell. The eyes were piercing as it stared right back at them, clearly unafraid, studying, calculating. It had the look of intelligence. Probably not sapient, but not dumb by any means.

Finally, with a growling snuffle, it turned and melted into the trees above.

Jim shakily let go the breath he’d been holding. “It was out… it was out in the sun.”

“Yes,” said Spock, holstering his phaser and picking up an armful of Jim’s grass bundles without taking his eyes off the area where the animal had disappeared, “Let us return to the campsite, Captain.”

Jim grabbed up the rest and followed, tossing the bundles over the cliffside so he could keep himself steady on the path down. His adrenaline was still rocketing his heart around in his ribcage, and his knees felt like jelly.

“You said the big predators only came out at night,” he said, as they made it back, unable to keep the accusatory tone from his voice.

Spock dropped his bundles at the base of the rock wall and began to gather up the ones Jim had thrown over. “I specified some of the animals would be nocturnal and thus may be light-sensitive. I did not exclude the possibility of diurnal predators. We have established there are many animals active during the day that show no objections to the sunlight.”

Jim huffed, grabbing a stick to stir up the coals in the firepit in front of their cave, and build it back up to a good blaze for the night. “This changes a hell of a lot of things, Spock.” He knew it wasn’t Spock’s fault, but his own scientific expertise was limited mostly to things like computers and mechanics and astrophysics. He sort of counted on Spock to know all of this ecological science stuff, seeing as he was always studying the forest and its wildlife.

“It changes one thing, at present,” Spock replied, looking around their encampment. “Our first priority tomorrow will be to construct a covering for the cave entrance.”

Shaking his head, Jim looked skeptically at the opening of their little alcove. “I don’t know that we can build anything that’ll keep that thing out if it wants to get in. And we’ll have nowhere to go if it does.”

“Perhaps not,” Spock agreed, “The fire is more likely to keep the animal at bay. But I would prefer to have a physical barrier, nonetheless.”

Jim made a face, but nodded. He would too, at this point. His heart was still beating a little too wildly for comfort.

They ate a dinner of fruits and tubers, markedly more alert, with Jim’s eyes darting back to the cliff top and the path leading up to it on several occasions. “You’ve been up there every morning,” he recalled, “You haven’t seen that thing before?”

“I have not,” answered Spock, “We have both been lured into some complacency by the docility of the wildlife we have observed here. It is logical that there would be diurnal predators as well.”

“I would think something that big would have been more obvious,” Jim mused, “It would’ve made wide trails and tracks, or… I dunno, left big piles of crap.”

“Thus far, we have only explored the forest area at this elevation and below the ridge. This animal went into the foothills above the cliff, where the fog is heavier and, I imagine, the terrain and biome changes somewhat. It is possible that the animal remains above this elevation and may not even bother us here. I am certain there are carnivorous species large enough to concern us in this part of the forest as well. We have not seen them simply because they do not wish to be seen,” Spock said. He tilted his head at Jim’s wary expression, “A scientist cannot assume all frightening creatures present an immediate threat, Captain. That animal has likely never seen a Humanoid, just as it was our first encounter with its kind. Its immediate reaction to us was curiosity, not its next meal. Unlike in the holofilms your species enjoys, most predators will not waste energy chasing prey if they are not hungry.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to be lunch the next time it is,” Jim chuckled nervously.

“Nor I,” agreed Spock. “We are aware of it now, and will be more prepared for the possibility of potential dangers in our vicinity in the future. We will not separate from now on.”

“Hey, now that’s a little extreme, don’t you think?” said Jim, a little thrown. “Neither of us are novices. I can look after myself.”

“You failed to notice this animal, Captain,” countered Spock.

“I did, and I know better than to let my guard down like that,” he replied, “I got lazy, I admit it. I definitely won’t do it again. But when I need to go take a shit, Spock, I don’t want you coming with me.” Jim had his reasons. Namely, his guts had been disagreeing with the food in the last few days. Not uncommon, really, coming off of months of replicated meals to alien jungle fruit. And here, he didn’t have any of Bones’ instant remedies. “I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want an audience either?”

Spock held his glare for a few moments but finally conceded. “I agree, moments of privacy are sometimes necessary. Though, we should make attempts to remain within voice contact.”

“We do that anyway,” he said, getting up to grab their bedding and begin to figure out the best way to arrange the grass between some blankets, using his knife and the paracord to haphazardly sew the whole thing together by the firelight. Spock came to work on the opposite side, to make the work go faster. 

Halfway through, Jim sat back, taking a look around their campsite, “I guess this is it, then, huh?”

“This is ‘what’, Captain?”

“We’re staying here?” Jim asked, shrugging his shoulders, “What I mean is, we’re settling in. Building a barrier, making a bed, gathering more food and firewood than we'll need in a day. Like we’re staying for a while.” He glanced searchingly up at the sky for something that wasn’t there, “I dunno, it feels like giving up hope.”

“Doing work which aims make our stay on this planet safer or more comfortable has no bearing on whether or not our ship returns, Captain,” said Spock. “Whether the _Enterprise_ arrives tomorrow morning or a week from now, then all we will have done is achieved a better night’s sleep.”

Jim chuckled and nodded, “Yeah. I guess we might as well.”

 

Early the following morning—after a fairly decent night’s sleep thanks to the new bedding—work on their ‘front door’ began in earnest. Spock had sketched a design in the dirt that maximized the best odds of not being torn down by a large animal—though Jim privately thought a 62.4% chance of success was close enough to 50/50 that it hardly mattered. Their plan was to raise two of the largest tree trunks they could manage upright on either side of their cave opening, bury the ends as deep as they could to hold them fast against the rock face, and construct a wall between, with a door they could brace closed from the inside, if necessary.

Jim quickly deduced this was going to take awhile, because first off, they had no shovels. He thought for a bit, and then went back to the larger cave to find a couple of those diamond shaped flakes of rock, and started digging. In fifteen minutes his hands were raw and aching from holding sharp edges of the makeshift tool, so he took off his shirt to wrap around it to continue. With both of them working at either side of their alcove, it was past noon by the time they had each dug two pits against the rock face, about a meter and a half deep, and could go no further. The stone cliff face jutted out underneath the layers of topsoil, preventing them from going any deeper.

Then came their next dilemma: the logs themselves.

“This one,” Spock said, selecting one of the tall, straight trees in the forest not too far from their encampment, then pointed to another of similar girth. “And that one as well.”

“Really?” asked Jim. Their two main pillars would need to be heavy and remain at least four meters in length, hauled back up the mild slope to their cave. “These are going to weigh a lot.”

“Indeed,” Spock said. 

Jim looked at the trunk again and frowned. They didn’t have axes, and making a primitive one with the ability to fell a couple of trees this size without breaking would be time consuming, and probably take a lot of trial and error, to be honest. The stone-knapping lesson in Survival 101 was all of a single session practical; no one was proficient. Metal required mining, purifying ore and constructing a furnace, all would take ages longer than they had time for. Hell, Fleet taught them to use the cutting tool they came equipped with.

“What’s the charge on your phaser?” he asked, taking his out to check it.

Spock answered without looking, because he likely checked his every morning, “Forty-four percent.”

Jim grimaced, “Mine’s thirty-eight.”

“For the sake of expediency, it is logical to use mine to make the cuts, Captain.”

“Yeah, but at some point, one of us is gonna be without a weapon.”

“At some point, we will both be without weapons,” Spock agreed, “I would prefer that you have one.”

He set the dial on his phaser and began to cut the tree down, brooking no argument.

With both trees felled, cut to length and the branches removed, Spock knelt beside the first, hoisted the large end up onto his shoulder, then slowly straightened and started to make his way back up the hill with the other end dragging behind him. Jim huffed in disbelief, watching his careful progress, unable to be of any help. He could bench maybe 115 kilos on a good day, if he’d really been working out, but these two logs had to be closer to 400 each, and here was Spock, handling it himself. Fucking Vulcans.

By the end of the day, they had their two pillars buried and a basic cross frame constructed between them. Exhausted and filthy, Jim headed for the waterfall, stripped down and dove in, telling himself the intense cold would ease his aching muscles. He scrubbed himself down, swimming a couple of laps and diving to get a good look around the pristine pool. It was several meters deep and very clear, and aside from schools of little minnow sized swimmers that scattered in his wake and a few larger ones that resembled the tree hoppers with fins, he saw nothing in the water to worry about. Still, he figured it was a good idea to check.

When he climbed out, Spock was there on the bank, stripped to his underwear and washing efficiently with a scrap of the blanket they’d sacrificed for such things. Beyond, he could see that Spock had rinsed both sets of their thermals and spread them on the rocks to dry, and he’d also brought a few more of their blankets, which Jim hadn’t thought to bring with him. Shivering, he gratefully grabbed one to dry off and wrapped himself up against the breeze. “Not gonna go for a swim?”

“Vulcans are not fond of submersion,” Spock told him. “Particularly in cold water.”

Jim grinned at that, but again, he was the one shivering half to death. Still, the waterfall was as nice a swimming hole as he could imagine. He took another quick look around, though, especially up at the top of the falls just in case their freaky new neighbor decided to join them. There was nothing but the usual sounds of the woodland creatures they were becoming accustomed to.

Spock finished his ablutions, now using a wet, rounded river stone to sharpen his Fleet knife. While they were fairly used to each other in such states, having shared a bathroom for so many years, for the most part they had afforded each other privacy on the ship and took turns. Apparently Spock’s offer didn’t necessarily stretch to bathing out here. Or it was just convenient, given the evening was drawing in.

“Still a lot of work to do,” Jim commented absently, pushing his fingers through his damp hair.

“Yes,” Spock answered, “I believe we will be able to finish by tomorrow. The remaining work is only to fill in the framework and fashion a door.”

It surprised Jim to see Spock raise the sharpened knife to his cheek and proceed to slowly and carefully shave with it. He brought a palm up to his own scruff, pulling over his belt to thumb at the dulled edge of his own knife. He wasn’t sure he had the balls to do the same. He’d only ever used a sonic razor—smooth-cheeked in a matter of seconds—since he was a pimply teen, and Fleet knives weren’t all that great quality.

Hell, it was surprising to see Spock in any state of unkempt, but here they were. Spock’s facial hair was thick by the time they’d arrived here to the forest, and the usually crisp edges of his hair were looking pretty rough too, his bangs covering his upswept eyebrows and the edges beginning to curl around his pointed ears, now that Jim had stopped to notice. If Vulcan hair grew so fast, he must have a standing weekly appointment with Yeoman Robins to keep his helmet head immaculately trimmed. Being out here in deep space and away from the formalities, Jim hadn’t bothered to go in for a trim himself as regularly as usual.

Spock was a hairy guy in general, he observed, noticing the contrast between the dark hair against the pale skin of his forearms and chest. Not that there was any ceremony to stand on here, no one besides Jim to see him in such a state, but maybe Vulcans had as strict standards of personal hygiene as they did with everything else. Come to think of it, he was pretty sure he’d never seen a Vulcan with a beard before. Maybe they didn’t have much facial hair, but Spock being a hybrid made it culturally necessary for him to shave. 

There were a lot of things about Spock he just didn’t know, he realized, despite having been friends for the last decade. Spock seemed to prefer being mysterious, so Jim had generally held back asking too much. Their friendship had always felt like a tenuous thing, more professional than personal, especially since his ‘death’. He looked away, turning his attention to using the river stone to sharpen his own knife.

The setting sun and incoming chill necessitated dressing in their still slightly damp clothing and heading back to their fire, talking about how they intended to finish their front door. The most likely method would be to weave the thin, silver-trunked, bamboo-like trees into the heavier beams of the cross frame until it was semi solid. Jim grabbed the frame and tried to rattle it. It held fast, shifting only a minutely between its tight bindings of paracord and the heavy, buried pillars.

“I guess its better than nothing,” he shrugged. “I hope it’ll be enough.”

“I imagine we will not know for certain until the arrival of the new lunar phase,” Spock said. “Though, from my limited observations, I cannot yet tell when that may occur.”

“Why not?”

“The lunar orbits differ from each other, and the irregular shape of the smaller moon makes it somewhat difficult to tell its phase. I had observed this when the _Enterprise_ assumed orbit. The Federation reports of the planet spoke of the moons only in relation to the colony and its tidally powered hydroelectric system. I had not considered it relevant to our situation until we arrived here in the forest, where the animals are plentiful and varied, and as we have learned, some are light-sensitive.”

Jim frowned up at the sky. He hadn’t even noticed the difference, just the fact that the moons were so bright that they kept the nights twilit and the shadows weirdly dark. Both moons had risen and were quite bright tonight, despite some gathering cloudiness in the distance, painting the forest and the impending clouds cover a deep red-orange.

“Yellowface has just passed half-phase in waxing gibbous, while Rosita is nearing full,” Spock pointed to the smaller moon. “The orbital plane is at an angle as compared to its companion, I estimate 20 degrees difference at least, and the orbit is chaotic, due to being pulled between the gravity of the planet and the larger moon.”

“So they won’t be the same phase at the same time,” mused Jim.

“They may be, at times, but not in a manner we can predict without diligent charting,” said Spock, “Yellowface is a large icy body, accounting for the majority of reflected light, while Rosita is composed of dark metallic compounds, most likely an asteroid captured relatively recently in the planet’s history. On nights when the former is waxing, waning or new, it will be markedly darker.”

Jim thought about this, “That means one or the other will almost always be out at night, right? So where does that leave us with the nighttime predators?”

“As we observed, the mortimanges were active during nights when the moons were not as bright as they are now, though they preferred to remain in the shadows.”

“And when both are new?” Jim asked, “It’ll be like nighttime on Earth, probably. We’ll be able to see most of the stars.”

“Perhaps,” Spock nodded, “And with it, the likelihood that nocturnal predators will be most active.” A rumble of thunder sounded in the distance, billowing clouds beginning to close in, though it did little to darken the twilight. He pulled his blanket tighter around himself and sat closer to the fire as a chilly breeze blew along their cliff front.

“The wind changed direction,” Jim noticed, licking a thumb and holding it up. “It was coming up from the south before.”

“I have been aware of the barometric pressure dropping since the morning,” Spock nodded, “It will begin to rain during the night.”

Jim grabbed another couple of blankets from the cave and brought one to Spock, wrapping himself in the other. “Didn’t you say there was a rainy season?” he asked.

“The Federation reports from the colony recorded wet and dry seasons, this being the beginning of the wet season,” he answered, “Given the biome where we are currently located, one assumes it will rain daily for several weeks.”

“Sounds like San Francisco,” said Jim with a smile.

“The climate is not dissimilar from California’s northern region.”

Jim scooted in closer to the fire. The weather in San Fran was a familiar torment to most Fleet officers based there. Some found it downright homey, enjoying the damp chill, getting coffee wrapped up in sweaters and boots, fireplaces—real or holo-projected—crackling merrily. But Jim hesitated to call it home. It hadn’t been for him, anymore than Riverside ever was. 

His mom used to say it was because he was born in space, that his soul always wanted to be among the stars. There was really only one place that felt like it was where he was supposed to be: the _Enterprise_.


	7. Chapter 7

“Captain.” 

Waking to the prompt, Jim blearily came to, curled tightly against something that was wonderfully warm in a very cold place. A moment later, he realized what the heat source was—his First Officer.

“Shit, sorry,” he shoved himself up and away, the frigid assault of the cave air giving him little time to get embarrassed. His breath clouded and hung in front of him. “It’s freezing in here!”

“Yes, I believe our fire has gone out,” replied Spock. He said nothing about the inadvertent cuddling, simply standing up from their sleeping pallet, taking his own blankets with him. Holding his hand out to test the ashen coals of their interior fire, he then pulled open the door in their barrier wall to a shocking sight. Jim got up and came to his side, looking out at the view before them.

The forest looked like it had been flash frozen. Ice coated every tree, plant, and stone, while a freezing drizzle steadily pattered against the cliffside from the pinkish grey overcast sky. The sun was barely up, though no animals called to greet it, all of them probably huddled deep in their holes or together in the underbrush for warmth.

“Is this normal?” Jim asked, “I thought this forest was temperate. Just rain in the cold season, like California.”

“It is not outside the realm of possibility that a temperate region on a planet largely covered in ice sheets may experience freezing on occasion,” Spock answered, stepping into his evo suit over his thermals, “Temperatures at the colony reached 0.5 degrees Celsius at their coldest recording, and we are several hundred meters higher in altitude at this location.” He pulled on his boots and headed up the ridge at a quick pace to the larger cave, where they had been storing most of their stock of firewood to keep it dry.

It had been considerably colder for the past several days, as Spock had predicted, raining every afternoon and into the nights, which were nearly as bright as daylight with Yellowface moving through its full phase and beginning to wane. Jim had lined the inside of their barrier wall with blankets in an effort to block it out so he could sleep, as it was playing hell with his circadian rhythm. He shivered, stepping out to grab a stick and stirred up the coals of their porch fire, which had also gone out in the freeze despite their rigging up a lean-to over it in attempt to keep it going through the rains.

Spock returned with an armful of wood and began building the fires back up. Once the outer fire was lit and blazing, they retreated back inside, out of the wind and needles of sleet of the storm. Spock boiled water for tea made from lichen that Jim found musty and unpleasant, and they ate from the stash the fruit they had gathered in the days prior.

They were not remotely equipped for freezing weather, Jim realized. They had beamed down wearing only the standard issue Starfleet thermal wear beneath their evo suits, and true to form, he had already managed to tear holes in his. And while the evo suits themselves provided a layer of decent water and wind resistance, the material was thin and had no insulation whatsoever. Spock was even more susceptible to the chill, and had already fashioned sort of a vest out of their surplus blankets to wear beneath his suit when it became clear the rains would continue for some time. With this icy frozen weather, going out to forage today wasn’t going to happen.

There wasn’t much to do inside the cave. Spock made a second vest for Jim to wear. Luckily, their small fire tucked against the rock wall did a good job of keeping their small space heated once it was going, and Jim was comfortable enough just in his thermals, though by the afternoon he was going spare for something to do.

Spock had taken to carving implements, mostly plates and bowls during the rainy evenings. Jim tried his own hand, just for something to occupy himself, but he wasn’t getting very far. His attempt at a cup wasn’t getting hollowed out, it was just getting progressively shorter.

“You must hate this,” he said, after watching Spock’s steady concentration on his carving for awhile, “This kind of weather, cold and wet. It had to be weird to come from Vulcan to Earth for the Academy, where its like this all the time, if you don’t like water.”

“On the contrary, Vulcans value water most highly, Captain, though not in the same manner as Humans,” Spock replied. “In ancient times, water was traded as currency. Wars were fought over its possession.”

“Yeah, that makes more sense,” Jim reconsidered, “On a desert planet, it would have been the most valuable thing there was. Was there ever much water there?”

“Vulcan had only small inland seas in modern times, remnants of a time long past, when the planet was much cooler. By the time my species had evolved, the majority of the fresh water existed underground in deep aquifers. Our oldest cities were built around rare springs at the surface. Using water to bathe or swim was frowned upon because of its intrinsic value.”

“They didn’t bathe?”

“Consider the context of mess where water is rare, Captain,” said Spock, “We evolved to conserve all fluids. Vulcans do not sweat or readily harbor bacteria on the surface of our skin, which absorbs water, but does not release it as yours does. Therefore, on Vulcan’s hot, dry surface, any water-based impurity evaporated swiftly, while solids were simply brushed away with friction. Fine sand and perfumed oil were commonly used for bathing purposes, before the advent of sonic cleaners.”

Thunder rumbled outside the cave, the sleet falling harder, drumming on the clifftop above. “I was fascinated by the rain and fog in San Francisco when I first arrived,” Spock said, watching the purple flashes of lightning from the vent at the top of their wall, “I was not fond of the chill, but the experience of damp air, the sensation of one’s skin fully hydrated, to a point where drinking was rendered unnecessary; it was a novel experience.”

“I guess it would have been, compared to where you came from.”

“In Shi’khar province, rain was so rare that even a brief storm occurred perhaps once in a generation. The sands of the Forge would spring to life for a very short time. Seeds—which were indistinguishable from grains of sand to the naked eye and lay dormant for decades—would germinate in the span of a single night, and the dunes would be as a carpet of small violet flowers. Then they would dry up and crumble to dust by mid-morning in the heat of the sun. I witnessed it once, when I was a small child. It was the last time it ever occurred.”

“I wish I could have seen it,” Jim said, then shrugged when Spock turned at his voiced thoughts, “Your hometown. I didn’t get to see much of your planet when we were there, and I think I would’ve liked to.”

“I would have enjoyed showing it to you.”

Jim studied his commander, surprised by the wonder in Spock’s descriptions of his lost homeworld. They’d never discussed it, since he'd never asked, not wanting to bring up something painful. But Spock didn’t seem to mind volunteering the information. It was downright emotional, though he probably shouldn’t say so. “I bet water worship was a big part of the Vulcan society. Before Surak, I mean.”

Spock nodded, “There were many sects dedicated to deities of water in ancient times. Even more recently, those who dwelled near the seas incorporated their regard for water into Surak’s teachings.”

“Was that acceptable?”

“Somewhat more so than other things our culture left behind in the Reformation,” said Spock. “Water is essential for life, thus its reverence continues to be logical.”

“So are emotions, I’m sure some people would argue,” Jim gave a shake of his head, “I don’t see how a whole planet as diverse as Vulcan could truly conform to a single lifestyle. Humans never could either, we killed each other over our particular definitions of the ‘right’ way to live for centuries.”

“We are expected to conform, Captain, because if we do not, we are at risk of falling into patterns of behavior that could bring about the destruction of our kind. Now more than ever before, it is crucial that Vulcans maintain our emotional controls,” Spock replied, then added quietly as he continued his carving, “But you are correct. There there have always been critics of Surak’s teachings. My brother, Sybok, participated in a sect of our people who embraced emotion instead of logic.”

Well, than blew Jim’s mind. “I didn't know you had a brother,” he frowned, thoroughly surprised. “How did I not know that about you after all this time?”

“He was already grown when I was born; we were not close,” Spock fixed his eyes on his work, “I met him only once, when I was very young. He was born of my father’s previous bonding and is fully Vulcan.”

“And he was one of these Vulcans who liked emotions?”

“His psi-level warranted strict instruction, to which he eventually rebelled. He used his considerable telepathic skill to gain power not unlike the priests and oracles of our ancestors. He chose to manipulate the emotions of others and gained a following of heretics. For this he was excommunicated from our House and from Vulcan. I do not know if he still lives. Perhaps my father knows.”

“Huh,” Jim wondered at that. “So Sarek had a wife before your mom? Why didn’t they… or did she—”

“They were betrothed as children, in the Vulcan way,” Spock explained. “She was a princess of the oldest and highest clan in Shi’khar province. When Sybok was a child, she chose to pursue the mind discipline of Kolinahr—the purging of all emotion. Some say because of it, as his abilities were said to be quite disturbing. Adepts do not require the stability of bonds, thus, hers to Sarek was dissolved. My father rarely spoke of her.” 

“A Vulcan princess?” Jim asked with a grin, thrilled at all he was learning. “Damn, Spock, you guys sure keep a lot of shit to yourselves. If she was a princess and your dad’s pretty high up too, are you…?” 

Spock twitched, as if he’d let slip a secret, but then tilted his head in the way he did when he knew lots of stuff Jim didn’t, making him laugh.

“Your Highness, I guess?” he mocked a bow, flourishing his hand for effect.

“Pre-Reform societal affiliations are now recorded only for historical posterity. While my House was not royalty, we were in their service,” Spock said. “If we continued to follow the archaic hierarchy, my father would be considered, I believe, a hereditary general. We were a militaristic race before our Enlightenment.”

Jim nodded, “Not really a change, then, for you.”

“No.”

He pondered all this new information. “Sarek must be older than I realized, if he had a grown son before you.”

“My father is currently 101.4 Standard years of age,” Spock replied. “Vulcan lifetimes average 2.1 times longer than Humans, provided they attain a full lifespan and expire of natural cellular degeneration.”

Jim looked at the fire. “The other Spock… Ambassador Spock was 162.”

“A notable median for a hybrid,” Spock agreed. “Not accounting for any unknown effects due to his… unusual travels.”

They fell silent for a time, before Spock spoke again, very quietly, “I find myself contemplating if I should expect the same, or if I will live a shorter or longer life, given I do not die here.”

“Don’t say that,” Jim said sharply, “Don’t talk about that. Okay? We’re not gonna die here.”

“It is natural to consider one’s mortality in situations of peril,” Spock said, “We have spoken on this topic before.”

“I know, but I don’t want to think about it now. You still never got it, did you?” he huffed, tossing his sad excuse for a wooden cup into the fire with a headshake. “Back in that volcano. I couldn’t just leave you in there to die. I would never do that, you understand me?”

Spock stared at him for a long time, the firelight glowing in his dark eyes. “In the warp core, I could not touch you. I could do nothing, but watch the essence of your life leave your body.”

“And Kirk… the other Kirk, he watched _you_ die behind the glass, in that other universe. And then he and his Bones brought you back. So we both got second chances,” Jim retorted, pushing a hand through his hair. “Now I don’t know what that means, if it means anything, but… not here, Spock. This isn’t gonna be how we go down.”

Spock eventually nodded, going back to his carving again. “No. Not here.”

An edged quiet settled over them, the sounds of the storm filling in. They had never discussed his death specifically, never acknowledged those brief minutes separated by a centimeter of transparent aluminum. To hear Spock say such a thing was almost as agonizing as the pain he’d felt in that moment, it made him shiver with that same terrifying fear. Spock had even said, when Pike had died that he’d joined their minds, that he had felt what Pike had felt as he died. He’d said he never wanted to feel that ever again. He wouldn’t have wanted to feel Jim’s fear. There was no reason for it. It wasn’t logical.

Jim wasn’t a moron. He’d taken the same Xenobiology courses as anyone on the Command track; he’d known about Vulcans and their touch telepathy long before he’d ever met one. It was clearly important to the culture Spock held up so high. Spock never touched anyone ‘unless he deemed it necessary to their physical well-being’, so he said. He knew that because after a particular mission when an unstable cliffside had collapsed and Spock had had to haul him bodily up the ragged face, fingers careful and hot as he’d checked Jim’s broken body through ripped clothes during the grueling hours waiting before the ship had been able to cut through interference and beam them out for McCoy to put him back together again. Hell, even this morning, he had allowed Jim to snuggle up close in the freezing cold, if only for the purpose of keeping them both warm, at least until he’d deemed it necessary to get up and get the fires going again. Sharing body heat was logical, after all.

But he also knew that was all bullshit. Spock touched people for other reasons too. He’d seen him touch Uhura, even kiss her, in public no less, like any decent boyfriend would—but that wouldn’t have been okay at all by the Vulcan standards Jim was aware of. Maybe it was a learned behavior. He’d been raised by a Human mother, after all, and he’d spent several years on Earth and on the ship among mostly Humans. He'd held up to Jim whacking him on the shoulder in friendly camaraderie in those early years, something he’d eventually stopped doing after Khan, when Spock had gone all stiff and formal again, basically broadcasting ‘don’t touch me’ far and wide.

But Jim also had fleeting memories from that month in the hospital, waking from his nightmares of pain and terror to a touch that was not the clinical hands of Bones or a nurse. They were hot and light fingers, on his wrist, or his collarbone, accompanied by a suffusing calm that chased away his bad dreams. Once, during a particularly bad night, a gentle touch to his face and a familiar voice, so close as to be almost inside his own head, softened to beyond anything he’d ever heard from him before or since, urging him to _wake, Jim. Wake, you are safe. I am here._

Sometimes Jim wished he’d do it again. Here, he didn’t dream of his own death. He dreamt of Spock’s.

He grasped for a better topic.

“If Vulcans are betrothed as children, were you?” he asked.

“I was,” Spock didn’t elaborate as Jim stared him down, the question only stretching the tension. It was obviously a personal question, and there had better be more to it, considering Uhura. Finally, Spock relented. “As we grew older, my betrothed preferred another, and the engagement was severed.”

“Wow,” he muttered, unsure of the protocol here, “That sucks, I guess.”

“No,” Spock said, “It was logical. I did not wish to share a connection with one who clearly did not feel affection for me.”

Jim let the corner of his mouth rise again, “Feelings, Spock?”

Spock ignored that. “I hope now that T’Pring still lives, on New Vulcan. Perhaps she has children, and our race will continue to rebuild and grow.”

“You never checked?” he asked, and Spock shook his head. “You could’ve. I’m sure that data is public record, at least to citizens looking for survivors. Especially the son of Ambassador Sarek.”

“Perhaps,” Spock allowed. “There is a Terran phrase that, in this case, applies. ‘Ignorance is bliss’.”

Jim chuckled, nodding. He had a few exes from way back that counted for as well. He was probably better off not knowing. Speaking of which, Jim bit the bullet. 

“Why didn’t you ever marry Uhura?” 

Spock’s eyes flickered in the firelight, and Jim squirmed under them. He was really hitting it out of the park with the personal questions today.

“Sorry. It’s none of my business.”

It wasn’t as if it was a possibility anymore. He remembered well when Form 8487-B had dropped into his inbox—Notification of Termination of Shipboard Personal Relationship. He saw and signed off on dozens of these, and the Commencement Form 8487-A, every other week; the confinement of hundreds of people in deep space saw plenty of his crew shacking up and breaking up in turn. He never interfered with any of them, even the ones where different ranks and chain of command were supposed to be reviewed. Of course, as Captain, he never engaged in it himself, but the way he saw it, his people could police themselves on those points and it rarely ever caused any issues. Spock and Uhura in particular had always been nothing but professional on duty.

So he’d nearly spit his coffee all over the console as he’d read through this one, the phrasing excruciatingly clinical, even for Spock. He knew the pair of them had had their ups and downs over the past however many years they’d been together, but that form had never been filed before. Both of their signatures were on it. It sounded pretty fucking final.

Still, he was curious as hell. “No, it is my business, you’re my friends. Both of you.”

Spock looked shifty, “It is… complicated.”

“It always is.”

“There are many factors in bonding for Vulcans, and even more to which a Human must adapt,” said Spock. “I am fond of Nyota. I am grateful for the depth of understanding she has afforded me. We remain friends.”

Jim nodded to that. “But…”

“Captain?”

“I feel like there’s a ‘but’ hanging here.”

Spock lifted both brows, “I do not leave conjunctions unattended, Captain.”

Jim laughed, “I just mean, there’s something you’re not saying.”

“Indeed, there are many things I am not saying.”

He huffed in frustration, “Was it the necklace? I mean, that had the whole damn ship talking—”

“Gossip being among activities in which leadership should not participate or encourage, the necklace was… a minor part of a more substantial issue. One I prefer to keep to myself.”

 

The hard freeze lasted only until the following morning, and the cold weather finally broke as the sun returned most of the daylight hours. It did continue to rain during the late afternoons and nights, but the freeze was, hopefully, an unusual fluke.

They spent most of their days out and about, as before. They had agreed not to go into the mountain forest above the ridge, conceding that territory to the large Hellbeast, as Jim called it, and though Spock still spent his mornings on the top of the cliff, neither of them had spotted it a second time. They tried to stay more or less within shouting distance of each other, keeping an eye on each other’s back, and being sure to scan their surroundings on a regular basis. On the one or two occasions when they lost visual contact, they still carried their communicators, and Spock had the tricorder, able to locate Jim by his signature within a few minutes.

So many of the fruiting plants leaned toward cloyingly sweet, which suited Spock’s tastes just fine, but as Jim had gotten older, he’d tragically figured out that he couldn’t subsist on sugar alone. After the first few weeks in the forest suffering the inevitable consequences of a mostly fruit diet, he found himself almost desperate for something else. 

One morning, he put down half of a marshmallow gourd without finishing it, clutching his cramping gut with a grimace.

“Are you unwell?” Spock asked, noticing his discomfort. “Are you experiencing a headache, fever or overall malaise?”

“No,” said Jim, “It’s not the virus, Spock. It’s just my stomach.”

“The incubation period of most hemorrhagic fevers is approximately 2 to 14 days from exposure,” Spock relaxed slightly, still studying him, “Since we have surpassed that window by more than a week, it is likely something else is ailing you.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s all the fruit not agreeing with me,” he muttered, “I need something else, Spock. All this sweet stuff, I’m dying for something salty.”

“You require more variety of macronutrients. I would recommend the salad,” Spock indicated the carved bowl of dark green leaves, fresh young fern-heads and mushrooms that he was eating with a pair of twigs he’d fashioned into chopsticks.

The Vulcan was fully embracing all the available flora, but Jim wrinkled his nose. The fern things were sort of tolerable, if kind of grassy, but the leaves were worse than raw spinach and all mushrooms tasted like dirt or wood to him. “You sound like Bones.” 

“Dr. McCoy has your health in mind as well.” Spock cocked his head in thought, “Your physiology is iron and saline based, where mine is not. You are not consuming enough of the specific vitamins and minerals your body requires to function optimally. Fruits alone provide you with fructose and fiber, but are not rich in sodium chloride, which is quite vital to Humans.”

“So where do we get it around here?” he asked, “The colonists would’ve needed it too.”

“As we observed, the colonists cultivated crops they had brought with them from Earth, and may have processed their nutritional minerals from the seawater, which was brought in through their hydroelectric system,” Spock hypothesized, “Salt and other minerals would have been a byproduct that built up on mechanical components over time.”

“So we go to the ocean?”

“We are now well over two thousand kilometers from the closest coastline with no vehicle,” Spock shook his head. “The animals here also possess hemolytic blood. They must acquire their dietary salts and minerals in some way. Perhaps there are deposits we have not yet discovered.”

“Or they get it from eating each other,” Jim put in hesitantly.

“That is a valid assumption,” said Spock. “If the colonists consumed meat, any domesticated Terran livestock they may have farmed would have been small in order to thrive on their journey here. Meat would have been the first provision to be rationed and then lost in the famine. If they did not venture out to gather wild edibles, then I would speculate they did not hunt either.”

Jim made another face. Spock had never said anything about his preferred steak and potatoes fare whenever they shared meals on the ship. The instances when Jim had eaten meat from a real animal were few and far between, usually during diplomatic dinners on other planets. Keeping animals for food had mostly gone out of favor on Earth since the advent of decent quality replicators.

But their phaser charges were uncomfortably low, and they needed those for defense. He didn’t like the idea of having to actively hunt. He hadn’t done that since… it had been a long time.

“Maybe I can rig up some snares,” he said, “Something to catch the little tree-guys, or the rock hoppers.”

He described how a basic one would work, with a young flexible tree bent down with a loop of cord, intended to catch an animal by the neck with a swift enough spring to dispatch it immediately and humanely. He went ahead and set a few while they were foraging, with Spock overseeing the process. The Vulcan said little, but Jim could tell he disapproved.

The next afternoon, after he had reset the snares once in the morning, he spotted Spock making his way up the hill, something large draped over his shoulders.

“What’s—hey, you got a pig-thing!” Jim exclaimed as he scrambled up, elated.

“The snare got the pig-thing,” Spock dropped the carcass at Jim’s feet.

Kneeling to look over the dead animal, he could see the way the scale-feathers were rough and ripped off around its neck, the cord having viciously tightened and cut deep into the flesh underneath. His snare had captured it, but the animal was far too heavy to have sprung the trap in the intended way, to break its neck immediately for a quick and humane death. He’d set it with the intent of capturing a much smaller animal, the swift rabbitish ones that moved on well worn paths through the underbrush. The pig-things outweighed those by four or five times.

He saw what had finished the job, though: a surgically precise insertion at the back of the head. Spock must have taken the tip of his blade and severed the creature’s spinal cord. A swift kill, after it had struggled to free itself, perhaps for hours.

“The animal was suffering,” Spock said, sitting on the log. It was blatantly obvious he was upset. “It is for this reason I do not approve of the snares, Captain. They may serve their function and dispatch a smaller animal, but without constant observation, you cannot guarantee that precise type of animal will trip it.”

“Yeah,” Jim nodded, “Yeah, no, you’re right. I’m sorry. I’m sorry you had to do that, Spock.”

“Apologies are illogical. My primary concern is your health. I have rescanned many of the plants we have been consuming. The majority do not meet the iron, sodium chloride, phosphorus or magnesium requirement of Human physiology. Those that do contain adequate mineral content would cause you a dangerous allergic reaction, even in limited amounts.” He looked at the carcass again, “These herbivorous animals feed on the nuts and seeds that you cannot eat. They metabolize your allergens, enabling you to consume the necessary minerals from the flesh.”

“Yeah,” Jim nodded again, still feeling guilty, “I’ll just… go clean it.”

Later, once the meat was spitted and cooking over the fire, he cleared his throat tentatively, “I won’t set the snares again. If I want meat, I’ll hunt it properly. I’ll make sure it’s a clean kill. Humane. And not unless I really need to, I don’t like killing things either.”

Truth be told, the pig-things were delicious. It was a dark, rich meat, with a sweet taste almost reminiscent of the Georgia barbecue he’d had visiting with Bones, but also with the savory, iron-rich saltiness he so craved. The tail meat was particularly fatty and succulent.

Spock didn’t speak again until Jim had indulged himself, sated and a bit sleepy. 

“It is logical for beings that require a diet high in protein and minerals to hunt in order to gain proper nutrients, particularly in times of survival,” he finally said. “All Vulcans understand this. We were once hunters as well.” 

“You weren’t always vegetarian?” Jim had always wondered what Vulcans had really been like before their so-called Enlightenment. He’d learned about it in Xeno-History, of course, but as with most things Vulcan, that was merely an unembellished summary of a story that was probably a lot more complicated.

“We now prefer to consume only that which does not possess consciousness.” When Jim nodded his understanding, Spock continued, “Life is a cycle. Some animals provide sustenance for others, and all provide sustenance as they revert to their base components. When Vulcans turned to pacifism, we chose to distance ourselves from the inherent violence of consuming other creatures. But we acknowledge it is not always possible, even among ourselves. Surak said, 'the trodden foot crushes a world unseen'.”

Jim nodded, “But you try not to, if you can.”

“Yes.”

“Is that why you didn’t want to kill the hellbeast up on the ridge?” he asked.

“For that reason and a variety of others,” Spock answered. “Had the animal presented absolute intent to attack you, Captain, I would have fired without question. It did not, however. If we had shot to stun, the creature would have had reason to view us as a threat the next time we encounter it. If we had shot to kill, then we would have had the carcass of a large animal close to our chosen encampment, with no simple or safe way of disposing of it. Logic follows it would have attracted more predators to us in abundance, including scavengers similar to those we have already encountered at the colony.”

“Good point,” Jim nodded, musing on his previous statements, “Your planet was a desert though, there weren’t that many plants available to eat. I can't imagine it was easy for your people to go vegetarian. And that happened way before replicators were invented.”

“Surak’s Way came to us out of necessity. The Reformation did not occur quickly or easily, but over more than a century of conflict and adversity. The transition came not only because our constant wars were annihilating us as a species, but also because the planet continued to change, by natural forces as well as our own turn to industry. We were as your own species was many centuries after us, stripping our planet of its natural resources with no care for future generations. An already arid planet was becoming more so. Many native plant and animal species were driven to extinction from hunting and habitat loss. Some clans died out from simple inability to adapt. Later, as our technology advanced further, others left the planet entirely. Some of these we know colonized other planets and evolved further, becoming separate from the Vulcan race.”

“Romulans.”

“Yes,” he confirmed, “Thankfully, the clans that still remain have learned to coexist, and to obtain food with more sustainable methods, which we continue to practice on our new planet. Most Vulcans keep a home garden, or a small hydroponic system to grow food, even in the cities. We are taught as very young children: pluck the leaf, another will grow in its place; pick the plasavas, eat the flesh, and plant the seed, it will bear fruit. Dig the shi’vasasna root from the sand, but save a mouthful to feed your children’s children.”

“A mouthful?” Jim wondered at that.

“A small piece of the tuber,” Spock said, “It was sacred to us in times of scarcity.”

“But you always save a piece?”

“It is a children's story, told among the clans in the region of Shi’khar,” Spock told him. At Jim’s curious smile, he began the tale, “Many generations before the Time of Awakening, a great drought was predicted by a priestess. That same day, Vitak, a boy they said would never be a great warrior and who was considered a curious fool, was sent on his Kahs-wan—his journey to adulthood. His clan was quite certain he would die, because he was small and not a good fighter. But he did not die, and instead evaded predators through stealth, and came to the base of Mount Seleya. There he discovered a small standing of shi’vasasna—the Vulcan water-root. Vulcans devoted little interest to cultivation at the time, so occupied we were in our civil wars. But Vitak was hungry, and so he dug the tubers and ate them. He quickly realized, if he consumed them all, there would be no more.

“By the morning he was to return to his clan, there was only one plant left. He dug up the last root and made his way back to his village. The warriors were surprised he had lived, but unimpressed that he had not simply endured his hunger, and scoffed at the small dried piece of the root that was all he had remaining, telling them of how it had saved him.

“He cut the piece of root into five segments and planted them in the sand near his village. From the five plants that grew, he divided thusly and planted them, until he had a vast field of shi’vasasna plants. So Vitak became the first farmer of Vulcan, though he remained an outlier.

“Many years afterward, when Vitak had grown, the springs of Shi’khar ceased to flow. The few edible shrubs and succulents in the region dried up and bore no fruit. The animals died of hunger and thirst. Everything in the region died, all but the hardy shi’vasasna, whose roots remained even as the plant above ground dried up, stretching deep to seek out the least moisture from the sand. And so Vitak’s village did not starve as most of their rival clans died. They survived the great drought, and thus became the ancestors of Surak, and myself.”

Jim grinned through the story. “You can do the same with potatoes. Take one potato, cut it up. You can plant the pieces and grow tons of potatoes, all from one single potato.”

“Indeed.”

“My aunt and uncle made me sit and peel buckets of ‘em when—” he stopped himself short, the smile dropping off his face. He looked down to the remains of the meat, enough to keep him well fed for weeks if properly preserved. He’d cut up the rest and smoke it over a low fire so it dried to jerky. This planet was bountiful in comparison, but his thoughts returned to one of true famine and death and killing. Killing when one should never have to.

“I was on Tarsus IV,” he blurted, seeing Spock turn sharply to him out of the corner of his eye. He planted his elbows on his knees and stared into the fire, “I was fourteen. Me and some other kids, we were the only survivors. We holed up in my aunt and uncle’s cellar, eating potatoes, until they ran out. I used snares to catch these… little lizard things. Basically the only things that were still alive. They were practically nothing but bones but… I had to. I had to find something to feed the little ones to keeping them from crying, so we wouldn’t be discovered.”

Spock’s face underwent a half a dozen micro-expressions before settling on a careful blankness, “I did not know.”

“Nah, you wouldn’t’ve,” Jim shook his head, taking a quick look around their camp, “That part of my file’s been sealed forever, and I finally managed to hack it and wipe that section completely, a few years ago.” He glanced furtively at his commander, “I had enough over my head, you know…George Kirk’s son, the Battle of Vulcan, being the youngest captain and the shit that came with it. My file’s been tampered with more times than anyone else’s in the history of Fleet, and only few of those were mine. Anyone with basic skills could see there was a high security redaction and try to break the encryption. I figure I’m allowed to fuck with my own file, right? So no one knows, I hope. Most of the people who did have that clearance are dead now.”

“Captain—Jim,” Spock shook his head, dismissing his criminal tampering for the more fragile part of his confession, “I grieve with thee.”

The response was so unexpected, Jim had no idea how to take it. No one had ever even asked if he grieved, not even his therapists. They wanted to talk about his anger and his petty crimes and his daddy issues, but never his grief. Yeah, he grieved. He grieved far more for all those people than he ever did for a father he never knew. He looked down at his boots and shrugged.

Spock spoke again, “You are remarkably well-adjusted for having lived through such an ordeal.”

“You haven’t met me, then,” Jim snorted, “I thought you had an eidetic memory. You don’t remember me cheating on your test? Throwing hissy fits on the bridge? I’m sure you’ve read my arrest record, my psych evals and all the spankings the Admiralty gives me anytime I don’t follow the rules. You know all about my ‘pathological desire to rebel’.”

“I do,” Spock conceded, “However, I have learned over these years that your unorthodox methods and disregard for rules and authority are often within reason for the situations to which you apply them. And unlike some, I have never known your rebellious nature to equate to malice.”

“You think so, huh?” Jim shook his head, avoiding his eyes, “You don’t really know what sorts of things I’ve done. Tarsus was…” he swallowed, turning his face down again, “You get good at compartmentalizing shit like that, I guess. You have to, to… keep going, afterwards. But I’ve done things, Spock.” He stared into the fire, feeling haunted by his past, “Bad things.”

“ _Kaiidth_ ,” Spock said. “What is, is. You are not now who you were. You are no longer that child, nor the young man who goaded me on the bridge. Furthermore,” he straightened, “Such characteristics are not uncommon in the repertoires of many great leaders.”

Jim exhaled, scrubbing his hand through his hair, “I’m not a great leader.”

“I am aware of 823 beings who follow your leadership without question,” Spock replied, “Only a select few of us do, in fact, hold positions designed to check your authority, if only to be certain you ultimately choose the wisest course of action. Which you do, 84.32% of the time.”

Jim scrubbed the heat from his face, “And what about the other 15.68%, Commander?”

Spock hesitated, and then gave a very exaggerated, very Human shrug, “No one is perfect.”

Jim laughed, long and loud, surprised out of his maudlin mood at Spock’s joke.

“I believe I now understand,” his First continued, “why you insisted on staying here to discover the cause of the famine and disease. The similarities are noteworthy.”

“It’s not even that, Spock,” Jim shook his head with a sigh. “Call it Survivor’s Guilt.”

“Perhaps. The concept is one with which I am familiar,” Spock admitted, waiting for Jim to meet his eyes again, and said gently, “It is not your fault.”

Jim shifted uncomfortably, again stunned by the total acceptance of his failings.

“Had you not survived that ordeal, we would not have met in this universe,” he continued.

“It’s nothing.”

“It was an event that informed much of your personality, such that you have gone to great lengths to withhold it from others,” he countered, “I am gratified to be entrusted with such information.”

Jim nodded, reaching a hand over to briefly tap Spock’s knee, a physical acknowledgement he only did these days when it meant a lot to him, but he hoped that would be the end of the discussion.

“We have both taken life,” said Spock. “We are both capable of bad things.”

“But you shouldn’t have to,” Jim insisted, “You won’t have to again. I’m sorry.”

“No,” he answered matter-of-factly. “I will do so again, if it is necessary for your welfare.”

“Spock—”

“I would have killed Khan,” he interrupted, looking at Jim directly, “I fully intended to murder him for what he had done to you.”

Jim was as startled by the intensity in Spock’s eyes and words as by the abrupt return to that subject. “Khan didn’t…I went into the reactor myself, Spock. Khan wasn’t responsible for my death.”

“You would not have been required to enter there had he not damaged the ship.”

“Marcus disabled the ship.”

“Khan dealt its final blow, it was his attack that caused the core misalignment. When I fought him,” Spock’s words held a contained fury, “I felt his mind, I saw his intentions. He meant to destroy everything, everyone, all life he deemed inferior. He reveled in the pain of others. He meant to cause you agony in death, Jim. An agony I watched you experience and could not stop.”

Shocked at this display, Jim shook his head in astonishment. What he was hearing was not remotely logical, and his XO was defending this reasoning with vehemence. 

“I will take life to save yours, Captain. It is my duty as your First Officer…and also as your friend.” He collected himself, adding, “But I would prefer not to.”

“No,” Jim responded dumbly. “Yeah. Fair enough.”


	8. Chapter 8

After five Standard weeks, the days had become routine to a point of mediocrity. And granted, Jim had a lifelong penchant for easily tiring of long periods of sameness, had even suffered it on his fancy spaceship, but the _Enterprise_ had any number of entertainments to keep a bored captain occupied. Here, he didn’t even have a good book to read.

The top of the cliff was Spock’s domain. Jim would wake in the mornings and climb the path to find him there, engrossed in his suus mahnas, or else sitting still in meditation, facing the hellbeast’s forest. A long, straight stick had been wedged upright into the narrow crack that vented their little cave, and from its shadows, Spock had begun charting three paths, etched into the wide, mostly flat surface of the clifftop by scoring marks and lines with an obsidian stone—one path for the Velarusan sun and one for each moon, and even marking a few of the system’s other planets near enough to be visible through the chronic moonlight. Sometimes Jim asked questions, marveling at Spock’s ability to chart the movement of the heavens without access to so much as a basic telescope.

Mornings were spent foraging, and afternoons on projects around the camp, under lean-tos near their alcove or occasionally inside the bigger cave to avoid the daily rain showers. For Jim, this usually meant helping Spock with whatever he had decided to work on. Sometimes it was carving containers and weaving baskets. Others it was making tools, with Spock knapping chunks of obsidian he’d found into axes or blades even sharper than their service knives and Jim binding them to wooden handles. Apparently Jim’s early assessment of Stone Age toolmaking in Starfleet was incorrect—Spock was proficient, which just figured, really. Spock was probably good at whatever the hell he put his mind to.

After he’d found a dished stone and rounded one from the riverbank, Spock put the combination to use as a mortar and pestle. An afternoon was spent chopping and mashing up their surplus of marshmallow gourds, then squeezing the mash through a tightly woven lining pulled from one of their packs as a sieve, the resulting liquid separating off to yield a cloudy oil. Spock preferred using this to wash himself instead of water, in the manner of his ancestors.

Another day, Spock had boiled a pot of wood ashes for hours to make lye, and then added some of the oil, stirring it together to concoct a rudimentary soap—a godsend for Jim, since his hair was an itchy, greasy disgusting mess by now, plus it was also a bit more helpful for cleaning accumulated grime from their clothing than plain water.

One sunny morning Spock wove neat mats, instructing Jim to grind up root tubers with the mortar and pestle, the same way he’d done the gourds. He then spread the resulting mash out thinly onto the mats and left them in the big cave to dry. Jim didn’t find out what for until a few days later, when Spock broke up the dried mush into a powder, mixed it with water and fruit mash, then wrapped the doughy paste in leaves and baked it in the coals of the fire, forming a sort of semisoft biscuit that actually tasted pretty decent.

“Well, I wouldn’t have pegged you for a baker, Spock,” Jim teased.

“Breads are common to almost every species that develops the practice of combining and cooking ingredients,” Spock informed him, “In the simplest form, it requires no more than any complex carbohydrate which can be ground into flour, and water, mixed into a dough and applied to a heat source until a crust has formed. One may add any variety of flavorings or leaveners to alter the taste and texture of the final product.”

“Or you just got lucky,” Jim dunked his bread into the vegetable and mushroom stew Spock had also concocted that was… not great, to be honest. He’d been making some effort to eat more greens to appease Spock on his nutrient intake, as well as not having to hunt too often. It had taken a few weeks and the addition of the occasional bit of protein with his dried jerky, but eventually his gut issues had resolved, though vegetable stew was what it was—not really his favorite. It desperately needed salt and pepper, but it was tolerable if he picked the mushrooms out. The bread dipped in the broth was good.

“Luck has no part in applying scientific theory to our current situation.”

“Of course not,” Jim grinned, taking another biscuit. “But figuring out how to cook bread takes a little something.”

“My mother moved to a foreign planet with food items she had never encountered, and did not wish to rely entirely upon replicated meals. She likened cooking to chemistry, a science for which physics and components are known and one can hypothesize how combining ingredients will affect the conclusion. She was well known for inventing recipes her Vulcan colleagues found fascinating,” said Spock, “I am simply following my mother’s example. I often participated in preparing our meals as a child.”

Jim softened; he couldn’t keep teasing after that. “So you learned from an expert.”

“Indeed.”

While their days kept them busy, the nights were somewhat awkward, at least on Jim’s end. There were certainly no more instances of unexpected cuddling, as it hadn’t frozen over again since that one night. They both prepared for sleep in their own ways, and both had their own sets of blankets. Jim curled loosely on the pallet closest to the rock wall, often facing it, while Spock lay on his back beside him, never even moving once he was settled. 

Still, there had been no hint of the _Enterprise_ nearby, or anyone else. The moons had nearly completed two full cycles since their arrival, and were waning once again. Their extreme brightness during the night was considerably less intense at this point in the cycle, but Jim still lay on the pallet struggling to fall asleep, and he couldn’t pinpoint a reason. 

They worked every day to keep their camp stocked and comfortable, and his body was tired. The mattress they’d crafted was decent enough, firm while still cushioning them from the rock platform. He’d slept in worse places. The temperature in the cave wasn’t too hot or too cold. The gentle crackling of their fires, the trickle of the spring water at the back of the cave, the occasional patter of rain outside, Spock’s steady breathing beside him, whether he was sleeping for real or simply lying there meditating—all were soothing enough to lull Jim into sleep. It had been restful enough until recently. He’d get right to the brink, but something kept yanking him back awake.

“Are you well, Captain?” Spock asked him once, when he’d startled to wakefulness yet again after being on the verge of unconsciousness.

“Yeah,” he muttered, rolling onto his side with his back to Spock. “‘M fine.”

The next night it was even worse. A sort of dread seeped into his mind, with no real cause. He felt strange and anxious, but there was absolutely no reason why he should feel that way. He tossed and turned, unable to get comfortable, when he thought he heard something weird. It was almost imperceptible, there and then gone a moment later in the usual sounds of the night. 

The following night he heard it again, and more of it. It was a horrid combination of a high-pitched whine, followed by a drone so low it barely registered somewhere in the pit of his stomach. If it had been constant, like the steady undertone of the ship’s engines, he’d be able to adjust to it, ignore it, but this interrupted, unpredictable pattern just tripped all sorts of wrongness in his head. A starship warp engine wasn’t supposed to do that, and a forest in the middle of nowhere probably shouldn’t either. He huffed and tried to plug his ears, but it didn’t help. It was driving him him up a wall.

“Captain, are you well?” Spock asked, once again.

He ground his teeth, wanting to snap at his commander. He was obviously just pissy because Jim was wiggling around too much. “Fine, Spock.”

It went quiet for another few minutes, letting Jim relax and very nearly slip into blessed sleep, but then it started right back up. 

“Dammit. Are you hearing that?” he finally rolled over and frowned, “That weird drone and… it’s like a hissing or buzzing, nails-on-a-chalkboard noise?”

“Yes,” Spock replied, “I first began to hear it four nights ago. The sound has escalated, as you are now able to make it out.”

“What?” Jim propped himself on his elbow, peering at Spock in the moonlight, “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“The sounds have been largely infra- and ultrasonic, frequencies beyond the range of Human hearing, and have been intermittent and infrequent until tonight,” Spock said. “To mention a sound a companion cannot hear often results in confusion and mockery, so I elected to make observations and wait.”

“You could have just told me,” Jim dropped back down on the pallet, “I thought I was going nuts. But you hear it?”

“The sounds are becoming louder and more intense,” Spock confirmed. “They are coming from within the cave system below.”

“You think something is down there?”

“I am quite certain something is making the noise, though I cannot say what, or if it is a concern to us. But I do believe it may be in correspondence to the upcoming lunar phase.”

Jim’s gaze cut to the small window of violet light from the very top of their cave entrance, just above the top beam of their barrier wall. Both moons were now thin crescents in the sky, one a large yellow slice, and its companion thin, jagged and red. Even now, the sky was darker than it ever had been before. “They’re both going to be new at the same time this time, right?” he mused. “Full darkness, for the first time since we’ve been here.”

“Yes. I believe we should remain close to our encampment tomorrow, Captain. Particularly during the evening hours.”

“You’re not even curious about it?”

“I am extremely curious,” countered Spock, “But I am also cognizant of the dangers associated with a lack of light on this planet.”

“You’re not afraid of the dark, are you?” Jim teased lightly.

“What people fear is not darkness itself, but the unknown,” Spock said, “And as you have said yourself, Captain, there is no such thing as the unknown, only the temporarily hidden.”

Considering that, Jim had to wonder what could be down there underneath this stretch of mountains, and if it was worse than what they’d already encountered on this planet. Experience had taught him that in a universe so vast, it could honestly be anything.

“Did you ever see a horror flick that broke the Blanket Rule?” he asked into the purply dim of their cave.

“The Blanket Rule?”

“Yeah,” Jim explained, crossing his arms beneath his head, “When you hide under your blankets, as a kid, the monsters can’t get you. You’re always safe if you’re under the blankets.”

“The term ‘monster’ is a misnomer. The hellbeasts, for example—you chose a name which automatically assigns inherent evil to an animal that, while disturbing to look at, has evolved to fill some as yet unknown niche, like any other,” Spock informed him. “Furthermore, it is illogical to believe a thin covering of cloth will provide any true protection from dangerous circumstances.”

Jim laughed, a little maniacally, “Yeah, that’s the bitch of it. I learned that the hard way as a kid.”

“On Tarsus IV?” Spock asked warily.

“No, before that,” Jim said lowly, smile fading, “Frank. A guy my mom shacked up with for awhile when I was about eight or nine. Real asshole.” He paused a moment before adding, “He used to get drunk and hit me.”

“Your mother allowed this to occur?”

“No, she didn’t know for most of it, she was on a six month deployment and left him minding us and the farm,” he answered, staring up at the rock, “Sam ran away, and I was pissed off, angry about it. Angry about everything. I was acting out, doing stupid stuff for attention, eventually the cops got involved—you’ve seen my record. When Mom found out…well, he’s pretty lucky she didn’t kill him with her bare hands. He went to prison for awhile. After that, I don’t know what happened to him. I don’t care either, I hated that bastard.” He paused to take a deep breath in and let it out slowly, putting an arm over his eyes, “I hated the system, I hated the court-mandated therapy, I hated Mom. I went to Tarsus to get away from everything and came back with ninety-nine more things to hate.”

Spock peered at him curiously, “As valid as that emotion is for suffering such abuses as you did, you have never struck me as a being consumed with hate, Jim Kirk.”

“Heh, well, I guess I’ve finally learned it’s not worth the energy,” Jim smirked, glancing sideways at his XO, “What do I strike you as, then?”

Spock quirked his mouth in thought, “From the moment I was made aware of your person, I saw a Human who projected a construct that disguised much of that which lay beneath.”

“A construct.”

“Yes. A persona, designed to appear over-confident, perhaps even foolhardy, arrogant. But as I learned you are none of those descriptions, I determined that your demeanor was simply a diversionary tactic. A mask. There is, as Humans say, far more to you than meets the eye.”

“Is that so, Commander?” he chuffed a laugh. “You calling me a liar?”

“No. In fact, your tactics are rather familiar. As you know, Vulcans do not lie, but we will use conjecture to our advantage, if necessary.”

Jim chuckled, but said no more. The screechy noise started up again from below.

“You have rarely spoken of your mother,” Spock commented. “Winona Kirk remains in Starfleet, an Engineering division Lieutenant currently assigned to the USS _Endeavor_ , I believe.”

Jim nodded, then shook his head contrarily with a sigh, “It’s… we don’t have a normal relationship. It’s hard to explain.”

Spock spoke carefully, “You need not explain if you do not wish to do so. You should sleep, if you are able.”

The implicit offer to listen was there, regardless. Jim let his eyes fall closed, as if that would shut out the irritating sound and let him sleep instead of talk, rolling over to face the wall again.

“She wasn’t ever there when I needed her to be,” he muttered after several minutes. “When I was little, she worked. She worked all the time, whether she was dirtside or deployed somewhere, and I was shifted between various daycares and schools and whatnot, for as long as they could keep me occupied. And when they couldn’t, they expelled me, I moved to a new one, and it started all over again. All I ever wanted was her attention, really. I wanted to be good enough for her to see me, but she just wanted to be where George was. She still wants that.”

“And Frank…man, fuck that guy. I’ll never know what she saw in him, but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t a thing like my dad. He’d never left Iowa, for one. He was a mean drunk, and not much better sober. He didn’t like kids, and he hated me. I sassed him. I could talk circles around him faster than he could process it, and he didn’t like that. She kicked him out, made sure he got what he deserved. At least she did that much. She said she was sorry, and that she…loved me. But then she went right back to work.”

He paused, unable to tell if Spock was listening to any of this on the bed pallet. Fuck it, if he was. It wasn’t the first time he’d unloaded this shit. Bones had asked a lot of questions. Spock said nothing. 

“So after that whole fiasco, I went to live with my Aunt and Uncle Cohen. Mom’s side of the family. They weren’t technically related, they were her half-brother Richard’s parents. They had a farming contract on Tarsus. 

“I liked it there,” Jim mused, “There were accelerated schools with interesting programs, good enough that I didn’t get bored that much. And they let me help out on the farm. My uncle taught me mechanics, let me help with the horses and taught me to ride. It was great, for awhile. Up until it wasn’t.”

“After I got back, Mom took a sabbatical to be with me. For real, she tried to take me to the state fair and play games and watch movies and…and I didn’t want anything to do with her. I blamed her,” he frowned, “I know better now, I know she was hurting and going through a lot of guilt and shit herself, but…you know. It had reached a point where it was too little, too late.”

Jim finally rolled back over on his back. The annoying noise hadn’t abated. Spock lay there, hands neatly folded over his middle, his head turned to face him in rapt attention.

He shrugged his shoulders, “So nowadays, we keep tabs on each other. We coexist with the fact that we’re family and Fleet, but…that’s about all it needs to be, at this point. All the shit that’s happened, it’s not something either of us can really discuss and forgive and like, put behind us.”

Where Bones had always pushed Jim to try and make amends with his mom, Spock appeared to simply accept this explanation with a nod. “I do not have a normal relationship with my parents either.”

Jim grimaced, “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“It is childish to retain any emotional attachment to one parent or the other after a certain age,” Spock interrupted his apology. “Once a Vulcan has entered formal schooling, there is no excuse for allowing one’s parent to openly show affection. I disallowed my mother’s physical embraces at that point. It caused her great pain and disappointment.”

Jim didn't know what to say to that. He hadn’t even seen his mom in years, much less given her a hug. He understood holding a person at arm’s length, even knowing it hurt them.

Spock continued, “My father and I did not speak for eight years, between my admission to Starfleet Academy and the mission in which we rescued the Elders from Vulcan as it was collapsing.”

“Really?” he asked, “Why not?”

“I rather abruptly turned down a prestigious position at the Vulcan Science Academy, insulting my father and the science ministers in doing so,” Spock replied. “It was, as you might say, a long time in coming. While I deeply regret injuring my mother’s feelings, I have no regrets whatsoever in telling those who consistently insulted both her and myself to ‘go to hell’.”

Jim looked over at him and grinned, “What a rebel, Spock. No wonder we get along.”

Spock closed his eyes, and the corner of his mouth ticked up just slightly.

Jim breathed a tired laugh, still annoyed by the pervasive sounds keeping him awake. 

It wasn’t until hours later, into the early morning that it finally stopped. Spock let him sleep in, and was long since finished with his clifftop routines and his breakfast when Jim finally emerged from the cave to find him driving silverwood torches in a wide semi-circle around their front porch area, their tops wrapped in scraps of blanket soaked with oil and tree pitch.

He frowned at them, “You don’t even want to get a look at the stars? I’d’ve thought you want to do some charting, at least.”

“Star-charting will be secondary to our ability to remain unmolested on a night when there will be many predators on the prowl, Captain,” he replied as he finished with the last torch. “Come, there is something you should see.”

He took Jim up the path to the cliff top, but only high enough for them to peek over its edge.

Three of the hellbeasts were lying in the grassy meadow, each one as imposing as the first time they’d spotted one, even lazing around like a pride of lions in the grass. One of them yawned, claws stretching and then tightening, digging rivets in the earth, and its huge jaws opening calamitously wide. A person could almost step right into the gape of its mouth. 

There was a rustle in the tree line above, and the hellbeasts lifted their heads at it, gurgling in their throats and slapping their tails on the ground as another one strode out of the woods, lifting its tusks high.

“Four of them?” Jim sobered quickly. Just one of the huge fuckers was quite enough, and they hadn’t seen that guy since the first time.

“Yes,” said Spock, calmly taking another couple of steps up, making him clearly visible to the creatures over the cliff. Jim grabbed his forearm to stop him, but the animals had already noticed. Oddly, they didn’t do much of anything, snorting and staring right back with limited interest, before the last arrival found a place to lie down near the rest. It scratched at the grass and rolled over to wallow with its legs in the air like it had an itch. “They do not seem to have any interest in us as prey at the moment. They are waiting.” 

“Waiting for what? Night?” he asked, “These are daylight animals.”

“It appears some diurnal predators will also participate in whatever occurs after nightfall,” said Spock, watching as the animals bored of them and turned their big heads and piercing eyes in the direction of the river. Spock motioned Jim back down the path. “It is increasingly likely this night will not pass without a disturbance of some type. Since we do not know what to expect, I believe our precautions are warranted.”

They went about their usual trek through the woods gathering some extra fresh food, noting the mood of the forest animals was tense and skittish. The tree hoppers that normally jumped from branch to branch over their heads chattering were silent and still, and a group of deerlings broke their cover in the underbrush to bound away rather than remaining hidden. Even one of the arboreal hunters—a large weasel-like creature that was ordinarily brazen enough come right into their camp and steal Jim’s meat from the smoking rack if he wasn’t paying attention—clacked a warning at him and dove into a tree burrow when he was minding his own business picking azuleberries from meters away.

“I don’t like this,” he told Spock, “They’re all wired and acting weird. Something’s definitely going to happen, and they all know it.”

“I agree. Animals on many planets are attuned to the lunar phases. It would follow that they are well aware of the upcoming event and are on their guard.”

“What if the hellbeasts all come down here and go on a rampage?”

“If they do,” Spock answered, “We will be in our cave with our phasers drawn, Captain.”

“Our phasers are pretty low,” he reminded him.

“I am aware,” he said, “We will endeavor to survive, as we always do.”

By midday, any sounds from the forest animals were silenced entirely, replaced by the persistent and increasingly louder high-pitched buzz emanating from the depths under the ridge, like a bunch of hornets amplified by a thousand.

When Spock roped him into bringing an additional supply of their firewood from the stack in the big cave, Jim had to cover his ears, the noise was so intense. It made him feel downright nauseated. While Spock paused to investigate at the back of the cave with his arclight, Jim could only grab an armload of wood and heeled it back to their camp.

As the dark finally began to fall and Spock lit the torches, Jim made himself ignore the noise long enough to gaze at the mass of stars emerging as the sun slowly fell behind the mountains in a brilliant red sunset. “Look at it, Spock,” he murmured, smiling up at the sky. 

Oh, he’d missed this. Thirty-some-odd nights on this planet with no stars and no true dark, and here, finally, was the gorgeous expanse that he so loved, the familiar streak of the Milky Way and its trillions of stars, still up there where they belonged.

But as soon as the very last rays of light shrank below the mountainous horizon to the velvety black, it began. The terrible buzzing became deafening shrieks as something burst from the mouth of the big cave. Many things, in fact—hundreds of bat-like, flying animals en mass, the rushing sound of many wings swirling up into the sky, spinning and wavering like locusts, blacking out the stars. In only a few minutes, it was a swarm thousands strong, billowing into the sky.

“Fascinating,” said Spock, watching the display.

“Holy shit!” Jim stared up in terrible wonderment. But then the swarm divided and grew limbs. The tentacles doubled back and down, shredding through the trees at high speed, the sounds of tearing and ripping in the wake of the wrenching cries of any forest animal caught out. It was familiar, like the mortimanges at the colony, or Krall’s bees attacking their ship, their home, ripping the _Enterprise_ apart.

They dive-bombed at Jim and Spock too, darting and swooping at their heads, creatures the size of a large Terran vulture or an eagle, flying so fast it was hard to tell their shape, screaming and retreating as soon as they breached the sphere of their firelight. The cacophony of their shrieks and the drumbeat of wings filled their ears.

“Spock, look, look!” Jim yelled under the din, pointing up to the top of the cliff, where now dozens of hellbeasts stood in a line at the edge, swiping with their claws at the flyers, their massive jaws reaching and snapping, snatching a mass of wings right out of the air and gulping them down whole.

And still more emerged, multiplying exponentially to hundreds of thousands, pouring from the cave mouth as a single gigantic entity and moving through the sky like some sort of Lovecraftian doom lord. More and more of the flyers pressed closer to their sphere of firelight, slamming against the cliffside and toppling several of their torches and lean-to’s as the swarm engulfed the entire area. They were surrounded on all sides with the flapping of wings, teeth and claws swiping inches from their heads and shoulders as they crouched low by their fire, the high-pitched screaming filling the night.

“Captain, we must retreat inside,” yelled Spock.

“Look at it!” Jim cried, resisting, but Spock wasn’t having it. He was dragged inside their cave, Spock bolting the door with two sturdy branches wedged between the door and the cross-frame, the animals thumping and flapping against the barrier.

It was only then that they realized the ground itself seemed to be shuddering, and the low, stomach-numbing drone rattled through the rock beneath their feet under the high-pitched maelstrom of animals outside. A scraping could be heard from the crevices at the back of their own cave, rock grinding against rock. And then a roar, drowning out the flyers. It felt like Jim’s eyeballs were vibrating inside his skull with it.

“Oh my god!” Jim shouted, hands over his ears, “What the hell is it? Is that them? The flyers?”

“I do not think so,” Spock yelled back over the noise.

The roar sounded again. Jim went to the door, trying to peer out from between the blankets and wood slats that lined their wall, “I want to see!”

“Captain, it is too dangerous,” Spock insisted. “The swarm numbers close to millions now.”

“But—”

“We are safe inside, for the moment,” said Spock, as the flyers continued to clatter past their barrier, “We cannot say the same if the animals realize where we are and attempt to reach us.”

Jim dropped onto the bed pallet, ears ringing from the onslaught of noise. It didn’t abate, the scraping and rumbling and screeching and flapping remained relentless, interrupted only by that deep sound-below-sound, bone-shaking roar. Dirt and dust fell down from the ceiling of their cave, shaken loose as it seemed to get louder and more directional, to their west. It was like the first firing of a newly built starship’s engines from the shipyards when he was a kid, so loud that even the sound dampeners installed around the base could only buffer it enough to make the reinforced windows of the farmhouse rattle, but not blow them right out.

“I can’t do this,” Jim finally said after a half hour, getting up.

“You cannot do what?” Spock asked from his meditative crouch.

“I can’t just sit in here hiding, Spock,” he said, pacing the small space.

“You are allowing your discontent to make rash decisions,” said Spock. “Please, sit down.”

He peered out at the swarm between the cracks in the barrier again, “It’s not as bad as it was. They’ve spread out.”

“That does not lessen the danger,” Spock told him, “The hellbeasts may have descended the cliff.”

“I don’t see any of them down here,” Jim retorted, nearly vibrating nervous energy, strapping on his utility belt, “I need to see it. I’ll take my arclight, I’ll take my phaser, but I need to see it, I’ve gotta see what that is!” he babbled, holstering his equipment in a rush.

“You said yourself, the phasers are low.”

“I know!” he shouted, “You can stay here.”

“I will not,” Spock said sharply, standing to grab his arm, meeting Jim’s daring glare dead on. Then he reached for his own belt, “We will go together. I will cover you.”

Jim gave a wild grin as Spock strapped on his phaser and arclight, and paused at their door, removing the cross bracing.

“Jim,” said Spock, his given name used so rarely that he paused to look back, “We will not die here.”

“No. Not here,” he nodded, an echo of a previous conversation. If it was too dicey out there, they would retreat. “Ready?”

“I am.”

They cracked the door, peering out to see that the bulk of the swarm, at least, appeared to have thinned out and moved on from their immediate area. They could still see it twisting and undulating over the lower reaches of the forest in the low starlight, and still hear the screams and flapping within the trees, but the worst of it had abated.

Jim headed out, swinging his arclight and phaser up at a few flyers that swooped at him, making them shriek and veer away. One or two hellbeasts still paced the clifftop above, snapping huge jaws or swiping claws at the remaining flyers.

Then another cataclysmic roar sounded from the big cave ahead, and Jim finally saw its source.

The girth of the creature filled the entire opening in the big cave, the top of its back scraping the rock as it pulled itself forward. Struggling, a massive, clawed limb squeezed through, scattering their surplus firewood where it had been stacked just inside to brace against the cliffside and push, dislodging rocks they had to dodge. When it finally freed enormous shoulders from the cave, the limbs found purchase and its long neck rose, lifting a head the size of a shuttlecraft high to roar deafeningly into the darkness. Its neck towered at least 20 meters in the air, above the trees, swinging back and forth as if to look around, but the creature lacked eyes entirely.

It rumbled in its great belly, shaking the very ground, the flanges about its neck splattering them with wetness like rain. It bellowed again, turning towards the river, dragging the rest of its long body from the mouth of the cave, hundreds of meters worth of almost colorless, transparent diamond-scaled wyrm, crawling and pulling itself to the waterfall, then down the winding track through the forest that the river carved all the way down to the valley and eventually the sea.

The flyers followed in its wake, swooping down at any living thing, including the behemoth, though they couldn’t penetrate its scales. Their resurgence of numbers chased Jim and Spock back to the safety of their own little cave.

“Fucking dragons, Spock!” Jim fought to catch his breath. “That’s some Tolkien level shit out there!”

“I would liken it to the Olm,” Spock said, bracing their door shut once again. At Jim’s perplexed look, he elaborated, “ _Proteus Anguinus_ , a rare species of Terran salamander that dwells in deep caves.”

Jim shook his head, “Whatever, it’s a huge fucking dragon, man, that’s all I know.”

As they listened, the earth shattering roars of the creature grew quieter and farther away, but the screeches of the flyers persisted.

“Who would’ve thought?” Jim shook his head, removing his phaser belt, “I never would have thought something like this was coming. How did you know?”

“I did not know,” Spock told him, taking the belt from him to put aside with his own, “My hypothesis has been proven incorrect.”

“Not really, though,” Jim replied, “You guessed that the nighttime predators that don’t like light would be active. You just didn’t expect a whole shit-ton more to come out of the woodwork.”

“Indeed,” Spock said, “It is quite fascinating. Two species, which require the darkness of a moonless night in order to emerge on the planet’s surface. An event that occurs with irregular lunar cycles, which I cannot yet predict.”

“How long do you think this will last?” Jim asked.

“If the flighted animals abhor the light as much as it would appear, I believe they will return to their cave by dawn,” Spock said, “I would assume the same for the large animal.”

Jim threw himself down on the bed again, his adrenaline draining as his curiosity was sated, but there would be no sleep tonight, not with all the racket outside. He looked over at their barrier wall covered with their spare blankets, just a peek of the stars through the vent they’d left at the top. The flyers could still be seen darting past like bats in the night. As their numbers had spread out, the noise wasn’t quite so intense, though it still remained an incessant high-pitched whine. He grabbed the blanket he used as a pillow and clamped it over his ears.

The dark night passed slowly. Jim had managed to doze for perhaps minutes at a time, but the noise remained and again became intense in the early hours. They peered out again as the dragon returned, no longer roaring, but bellowing and groaning with what sounded like exhaustion as it dragged its massive body back into the cave. The swarm of flyers followed, no longer frenzied in attack, but squabbling with each other and at the dragon blocking their way to return to the safety of the underground before the light returned.

When the sun finally rose to a startlingly quiet morning after so many hours of unrelenting noise, Jim and Spock emerged to take in the aftermath.

The forest was in shambles. Foliage was shredded from nearly every tree, leaving tall bare trunks, the ground littered with the ruin of broken branches and torn leaves. There were bits of dead animals that had been killed and ravaged by the flyers everywhere. Many of the fruits, too, were destroyed, broken, half-eaten and the remains left to rot. 

The hellbeasts had gone back into their high altitude forests, but the top of the cliff was littered with evidence of their feasting, severed wings and a few mostly whole corpses of the flyers. The grass was all trampled down from their party. After righting his fallen charting stick, Spock spread out the body of one dead flyer to study its anatomy. It was a four-winged creature, lizard-like with elongated scales on its appendages, but unlike the wings of a bird, bat, or insectoid, these had a unique design. Of all the different species on this planet, these were the only one that seemed to have evolved the means of true flight. Its light-hating eyes were tiny and pearlescent, with three openings in the skull in between them that Spock theorized might be some form of an echolocation mechanism.

“The hellbeasts are drawn to this cliff, not because we are here, but because it is an ideal place for them to catch prey in abundance for a short time.”

“Like bears at a salmon run,” Jim put in.

At the river, the destruction was of a different sort. While there were gauges in the banks, fallen trees and tumbled boulders where the massive dragon animal had knocked them down, it had not rent a path of death in its wake. Here, they saw that some of the forest animals had escaped the massacre of the flyers. All different types, from little tree hoppers to pig-things and the deerlings had emerged together from the stripped trees and were gathered together on the banks of the river, lapping at the rocks and squabbling over dinner plate sized scales shed from the dragon as if they were pieces of fruit.

Spock knelt to pick up a scale himself. He touched the semi-transparent surface, and then at the strange caked area around the little nodule where the scale had been attached. Scraping it with his fingernails, he observed the flaky residue, and then to Jim’s surprise, raised his fingertips to his mouth and tasted. “Fascinating.”

“What?”

“The creature’s scales have a strong residue of sodium chloride,” he explained, handing the scale over, “Salt.”

“It lives in salt water down there?” Jim touched the residue and tasted it himself, mouth puckering at the briny, seawater taste. “But we’re not near the ocean at all.”

“No. Perhaps the creature passes through a halite deposit during its ascent through the cave system. Or perhaps there is a reservoir of brackish water in which it lives. Perhaps both, as halite would leach into the ground water, causing pools of brine to settle below any fresh water deposits,” Spock observed the other animals lapping at the salty rocks and shed scales. “In any case, the emergence is an event of considerable importance to this ecosystem. This is how the animals supplement their diet. It is both feared and anticipated by the animals of the forest. They are all connected.”

Jim wondered at that. “So the dragon and the flying things are…the same species? Like a hive?”

“Not a single species,” said Spock, “A symbiotic cooperative. I believe we may have discovered the meaning of _Oscuridão e Furioz_ —the Darkness and Fury of which the colonists spoke in their distress call, Captain. The reason why they pointed their lights upward and outward from their settlement.”

Jim’s face lit with the connections. It all made sense now. “The massive wall around the city, and the lights! Oh, and the spikes on the backs of those plains creatures!”

“Indeed. An amphibious species,” mused Spock, “One which lives the majority of its life in the subterranean depths of a underground lake, perhaps, and grows to immense size. It makes its way to the surface only on the darkest nights of the year. The Darkness.”

“And the flyers are the Fury,” Jim shook his head, “Damn.”

Back at the big cave, they collected what they could of their firewood that had been scattered by the emergence of the dragon. Spock brought several of the dragon’s shed scales back to their camp and used his knife to scrape the salt from them into a carved container for Jim’s use.

The captain frowned, kicking at a broken azuleberry bush he had frequented just outside their camp after gathering what berries he could salvage from it. “Do you think we should leave? I mean, all the fresh food is destroyed. We’re camped right in the thick of this, right next door where it all happens. It’s a good thing you found this cave, since my choice was obviously Smaug’s doorstep.”

“I am unsure, thus far,” said Spock, who was repairing the lean-to over the fire pit. “We have enough food stored to last the next several days, and there are still fresh food options, despite the apparent damage. Any root vegetables beneath the ground should remain viable to us. We can be certain that this event will not occur again for some time, not until the next simultaneous new moon.”

“You said you couldn’t predict it.”

“I cannot predict the precise day as of yet, but it will not occur again within the next few weeks,” he replied, standing up to examine their wall for damage. “The barrier we constructed functioned adequately against the Fury, they did not appear to detect us through it. The hellbeasts have not ventured below the cliff, and all of those that responded to the lunar phase have since retreated to their respective habitats.”

He turned to Jim, folding his hands behind his back formally, “I do not see an immediate need to leave, Captain. If we determine that we must vacate this area in the near future, there is ample time to make plans. Additionally, there is no guarantee that another location will be safe. This may be a single territory of what maybe be several in these mountains, harboring similar animals.”

Jim frowned, but nodded, “I guess it won’t hurt anything to stay, for now.”

The forest recovered from the event in surprising time. In the evenings after the sun set and the moons waxed, Jim spotted bands of about ten or so mortimanges in the forest, quickly cleaning up what remained of the dead. The afternoon rains of the wet season continued, and the trees put forth new leaves, quickly filling the forest canopy back in. Soon, there were new fruits, and the forest creatures were seen with offspring in tow. The area had replenished and renewed itself. The moons were bright in the sky and the nights were peaceful, as if it had never happened.

Such was the cycle of life in the mountain forests of Velarusa IV.


	9. Chapter 9

“How long have we been here?”

“In Standard time: five months, three weeks, six days and fourteen hours. Planetary calculations differ.”

Jim pulled down his bangs to see that they now stretched nearly to the end of his chin, fried from the sun on the ends and even longer and more annoying in the back as it stuck to his sweaty neck. A slight natural wave made it unruly as hell. He’d taken to tying a cord around his whole head like a headband to keep it out of his face. His beard was brushy, badly shortened where he’d grabbed tufts and sawed them off with his knife about an inch from his jaw. As the daily rains tapered off and the temperature steadily climbed, he longed for a sonic razor. He still didn’t trust himself to shave the way Spock did each evening, with one of his viciously sharp flakes of obsidian, nearly transparent and far sharper than their Fleet issue knives. It could sink deep into flesh so easily he wouldn’t even feel it. 

Sometimes Jim imagined he looked like the lifelong surfers in the secluded inlets around the San Francisco Bay, the ones who lived and died by when the swells were up, all sun-bleached and tanned and groovy. Other times, if he managed to catch his reflection in a still pool, he looked more like what he was: a skinny, freckled wild man stranded on Planet Bumblefuck, ass-end of Beta Quad, rescue increasingly unlikely.

By contrast, Spock’s hair was well on its way to mid-back now, straight as a ruler and so dark it shone almost purple in the late evening light of Luna Rosita. He sometimes braided it back in intricate twists like the baskets and cords he wove, but strands of it would inevitably work free, falling like dark streams of water over the strong features of his face. When it was loose, it would fall down over his shoulders, rarely tangling as each hair was so smooth it slipped easily free with a little combing of his fingers. His wiry frame remained Vulcan pale and all lean, hard muscle, obvious when he was hauling huge logs up the hill to be chopped, shirtless and perfectly comfortable in the boiling temperatures. Jim imagined this was how Pre-Reform Vulcans had looked once, long-haired, fierce and built like a brick shithouse. Spock was far from uncontrolled, of course; he meditated every day, thought and spoke with his usual precision, but Jim had noticed a marked looseness to his stride, a significant uptick in those tiny facial expressions and instances of noticeable emotional tones.

The moons had waxed and waned as the truncated months of Velarusa IV passed, but so far, they had yet to synchronize again. A couple of times it seemed a close thing, but according the analemma charts Spock had faithfully etched into the clifftop, they were off by just enough that one moon or the other was always at least partially shining and the night was never fully dark, so the Fury didn’t awaken, and the Darkness didn’t emerge.

All the animals molted their old scale-feathers with the rising temperatures, and the fluff of their downy undercoats floated everywhere in the breeze. It collected on brambles as they scratched and rubbed it away to reveal new coats of shiny, brightly colored scale-feathers growing in. Jim collected masses of the stuff to refresh their bedding.

With the dry season now in full effect, nights were far too warm to keep a fire going inside the cave, and many were nearly as bright as daylight with Yellowface high and close in the sky. Jim disdained the constant light, complaining that he couldn’t sleep, particularly since he wasn’t able to hide from the light under a blanket with the heat. Spock remained unaffected, staying awake sometimes three or four days at a time, only meditating for rest, and had no issues with the temperature.

The only real respite was Jim’s daily—or more often—swim at the waterfall pool. He relished it, diving into the water, still cold but not bone chillingly so now that the ambient heat in the area was like an oven. Spock often sat on the rocks, performing his ablutions in his own way, shaving with that terrifying obsidian knife and rubbing his skin with his oils in the broiling sun.

Jim swam to the bank for a handful of the soap Spock made. It lathered up to decent suds to get rid of the greasy, sweaty grime on his hair and skin, then he dove under again, coming up to float lazily and watch the bubbles get carried away in the river’s current.

The pool was itself a unique environment, crystal clear and populated with swimmers both minuscule and somewhat larger, the biggest about as long as Jim’s forearm. Little flowering water plants swirled along the edges of the rocks, and the area below the plummeting waterfall was deep and dark. Jim had swum down below and behind it numerous times these last few months, listening to the water crashing from above and poking around in the dark rocky crevices.

So when something he hadn’t seen before, a creature almost as long as he was tall shot out at him from one of the shaded underwater overhangs one afternoon, Jim panicked, bubbles escaping his mouth in an aborted shout as he scrambled for the surface.

“Whoa!” he shouted, splashing about as he gulped air. He took another breath and ducked back down in time to see whatever it was undulating back under the rocks like an eel.

He swam back over to the bank to climb out.

“What is it?” Spock asked, standing on the rocks above.

“I dunno,” Jim muttered, squinting back at the deep pool, “Something down there tried to take a bite out of me.”

“Are you injured?” the Vulcan looked him over carefully.

“No,” Jim shook his head. “It was bigger than the swimmers I’ve seen in there before, though.”

“Perhaps you encroached into its territory and it was giving you a warning,” Spock almost frowned, “You should discontinue swimming in the pool.”

“Spock, don’t jump to conclusions, it’s not that big a deal.”

“A potentially dangerous animal attempted to ‘take a bite out of you’, Captain. To avoid a future occurrence, logic follows you should not antagonize it again.”

“Come on, I’m not gonna stop swimming for this, it’s a million degrees out here!” Jim complained, “And it wasn’t that big, not big enough to actually hurt me.” 

He was guessing, but it wasn’t likely, anyway. There had been some big ass catfish in the swimming holes he’d frequented as a kid back in Iowa too, known for taking a nip out of people sometimes. They were mean and territorial, but not actually dangerous.

“You could just as easily bathe on the bank in the river shallows,” the Vulcan countered. “Furthermore, it has been 37.45 degrees on average in the last five days—not one million, which would surely kill us both.”

“Maybe that’s great for you, but it’s too damn hot for me,” he rolled his eyes. “It’s a big pool. I just won’t swim down there where it hides again.”

And he didn’t, for the most part. If the thing hid down in the deep parts of the pool, he could leave well enough alone, as long as that was the status quo. The days wore on after that incident, and if Jim saw the creature come out—which it did sometimes, in the later parts of the day when the trees blocked parts of the pool from the punishing sunlight—he kept it to himself.

 

The hot days wore on, and Jim could only chop and stockpile so much firewood that they didn’t really need for the season, and he couldn't justify hunting unless he was running low on dried meat. They had ample supplies of food, both fresh and stored. He was often at a loss for ways to keep busy.

Spock, on the other hand, had no problem occupying himself, or enlisting Jim to help out. If he wasn’t charting the heavens or studying the local flora and fauna, weaving new baskets or mats, pressing oil, grinding flour, washing and repairing their clothes, making tools, or barring everything else, meditating, he was doing things that captivated Jim.

He’d never thought of Vulcans as particularly artistic. Granted, he’d never technically set foot on their planet—just fell through it’s rapidly collapsing atmosphere—and he hadn’t had much time after that to look at historical records, although he had to admit their written languages were beautiful to look at. So when Spock began to make things that were of little practical use, he was somewhat mystified.

Spock often collected small items of all kinds on his foraging treks, anything from animal scales in a variety of shapes and sizes, odd looking seedpods, shed claws or interesting stones. One evening, he drilled small holes into each one, strung a few of them onto a cord and hung it from his neck. When asked why, he said, “I thought it wise to keep certain items for potential scientific study.” But when asked why wear them as jewelry, he merely shrugged and made another, for Jim.

During a long, baking hot stretch of days in which Jim could do nothing but lay around and sweat profusely, Spock made paper. He collected the shavings from his carvings, leavings from his oil pressing, and even the old grass and down fluff from their bedding, and pounded it all to a wet, gooey pulp. This he pressed out as thin as he could between flat woven mats that he laid out on the scalding, sun-drenched top of the cliff, weighted with rocks, letting it dry before trimming and rolling it into scrolls. They began writing logs with ink made of oil and berry juice, but the paper was lumpy and the ink dripped and splattered from their makeshift reed pens. Unused to writing longhand, Jim got frustrated and soon gave it up, but Spock persevered, his Vulcan scripts and Standard print astonishingly neat and clean. He kept track of the months, made scientific observations and drawings of the animals, anything that struck his interest, scrolling and tying them all together in organized bundles.

Other evenings, he began whittling small, simple figurines out of scraps of wood: a sehlat, a Terran bird, a representation of Surak and the IDIC symbol, which he also strung on his necklace. He carved Vulcan script into his and Jim’s spear shafts, words of safety and strength in the manner of the Ancients, so he said. 

He carved a tiny, delicate _Enterprise_ , which he gave to Jim. The entire thing fit in the palm of his hand, with its serial number painstakingly lettered on the saucer and the sides of the nacelles. Not really the sort of thing that could be carried or worn, but Jim eventually tied it to a thread of paracord and strung it above their door.

Then, over the course of several nights, Spock carved a chess set. He left one set the plain, greenish color of the wood, and the other he stained blue with azuleberry juice, and polished it all to a high sheen with oil. The board was split strips of wood, soaked and woven together. It was an exquisite piece of work in Jim’s opinion, and they played nearly every following night.

One such evening, sitting by the small fire they always kept burning outside their cave, Spock seemed particularly introspective, and Jim wasn’t fairing much better.

“Half a year, now,” he said, moving a pawn and knowing Spock would collect it. Their rudimentary board didn’t offer near as many statistical possibilities as 3D chess did, but Jim was glad to know that he could still win almost half of their games.

“Is the date significant, Captain?” Spock asked.

Jim shrugged, voicing his fears quietly, “Maybe they forgot.”

“I doubt our crew have forgotten they left their commanding officers on a planet,” his first officer said. “It is more likely they are delayed in some manner.”

“Then maybe something bad happened to them,” he persisted, pessimism running rampant in his head.

“Then Starfleet will send another ship to retrieve us,” Spock replied, taking Jim’s pawn, “Eventually.”

Jim studied the board to hide his doubts. Sure, there were any number of factors that could be delaying them from being rescued. They could have had to go back to Fed Space for help. They could have had to take the long way around, the way they’d come out here, a year long trip, which would mean another year or more to return. They could have gotten blown up and Starfleet may have deemed coming to get two men that had a tendency of annoying the Admiralty on any given day too much trouble. “What if they don’t, Spock?”

“Then we will continue on, as we have been, Captain,” Spock said, “Starfleet does not leave people behind. There is little else we can do, but wait.”

Jim huffed. He hated waiting. Especially when there was nothing he could do to bring about its end. “They left this colony behind. There were thousands of people here and Starfleet hasn’t been back to check on them for fifty years. And it’s been six months already.”

“I understand your concern,” Spock said. “I left several experiments in process on the _Enterprise_ , and I was most interested to observe their conclusions. I can only hope my department continued them and made thorough reports in their outcomes.”

That brought a chuckle from Jim’s throat, and a sigh.

“We must have faith they will come back for us,” Spock said, pointedly meeting his eyes.

Shaking his head, Jim moved his knight to take Spock’s rook. He didn’t have a lot of faith in much of anything, except maybe Spock himself. Starfleet and the Federation was an ideology that he accepted and lived on its face, but it had its problems, and what had happened to this colony was gnawing on one of them. “Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn’t have just left,” he confessed quietly, “We couldn’t help them. We were too late. I decided to stay, and that’s why we’re stuck here now.”

“You did what you believed was necessary to help people, Captain,” his XO answered, “Though I understand this is of little consolation for our present situation.”

“Why didn’t you tell me otherwise?”

“I saw no reason to question your decision to remain on the planet. It was logical, and at the time I beamed down, there was no verifiable threat to our ship,” Spock answered. “I do not blame you for our stranding.”

They played on for several quiet minutes, Spock and Jim each collect another of each other’s pieces.

“I have wondered often about my own decisions,” Spock spoke as he moved his remaining rook from the path of Jim’s queen. “My counterpart affected two timelines, one of them to significant negative affect.”

“Spock, you’re not—” Jim started, but was interrupted.

“I am aware that I am not the same person as my counterpart, and that I am not predestined or doomed to make the same errors,” Spock said, “But in some ways, I wonder if our…sameness, our identical being, is a catalyst in some unverified manner—a genetic predisposition. I find myself questioning every decision, to be certain its outcome will not be deleterious.”

“Not everything he did was bad, you know,” Jim said, “Some of it was just shitty timing. Bad luck.”

“I do not believe in luck.”

“No? Something tells me you will,” he smiled, “I used to talk to him a lot. The Ambassador. He was a good guy.”

“I did not speak with him often.”

“Why not?”

“I did not wish to base my decisions on instances which may have occurred in his timeline. Likewise, he was reluctant to share such things with me for the same reasons,” Spock was momentarily quiet. “In the few instances I corresponded with him, it was clear to me that he was…plagued with many of the same failings—of both Vulcan and Human varieties—as I.”

Sighing, Jim frowned. The few things he had found out about his own counterpart gave him just as much pause as he imagined Spock’s had. The other universe’s Jim Kirk wasn’t half as much of a fuck-up, for one thing. He grasped for a way to explain, “Do Vulcans ever have twins? Identical twins?”

“We do not. In rare instances of occurrence, embryo separation is usually brief—the weaker will be starved of nutrients by the stronger and absorbed. It is considered a basis of our combative instincts.”

“Okay,” Jim latched on to that. “You know Humans do, though. And there have been studies, centuries of studies about how identical they really are and how they’re not, because of environmental conditions that start even before they’re born. They even tested some of the early astronauts who were twins, just to see what space does to people. So even if they are identical genetically, they aren’t always the same size, or have the same hair color… they don’t even have the same fingerprints.”

“My counterpart and I did have identical fingerprints and eyescans. It presented a significant security concern, until my counterpart volunteered to have a unique signature inserted into his irises.”

“But you still led entirely different lives. He never told me much of anything either, when I asked. Besides, there’s only one of you now, again. So the wrinkle in time is ironed out,” Jim replied, stretching a little. “Man, I miss that guy. He was funny.”

Spock looked up from the chessboard. “Funny?”

“Yeah, hilarious.”

“I did not find him humorous.”

“Really, Spock? You’re the funniest Vulcan I’ve ever known,” he grinned, “Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. Your deadpan is the best part.”

Spock merely stared back at him with that utterly straight face, and Jim erupted into giggles. “That, exactly.”

After a pause, Spock asked, “Even though we are aware that we exist in infinite multiverses, you believe that the ripple effect of one ‘wrinkle’, as you say, will not compromise us again?”

“I have no idea. All that Chaos theory, Butterfly Effect shit has always blown my mind,” Jim admitted with a sigh, looking up at the orange-purple evening sky and wishing he could see the stars. “But I do know one thing for sure.”

“What is that?”

“There’s only one Jim Kirk and Spock on this shitty planet, and we aren’t doing anything to affect the rest of the universe right now. Or the multiverse for that matter.” He looked back at the board, moving his own long held back rook, “Checkmate.”

Vulcan eyebrows quirked as he studied the board, making Jim chuckle again with his accomplishment.

Spock’s intelligence and limitless curiosity had always been endearing. Jim had a ship full of geniuses, of course, but of all of them, Spock was always the one that kept Jim on his toes. On the ship, Spock had always been running some variety of experiment, always writing theses for the sort of academic journals only the brightest minds in the galaxy subscribed to, and endlessly available to pull a completely random factoid out of his ass that was somehow relevant to their missions. 

Here, watching him adapt all that genius to their primitive lifestyle was, to borrow a word, fascinating. It showed him sides of the Vulcan that he’d never seen before.

Jim was a survivor. From the fraught day of his birth to avoiding Frank’s abuse, being hunted on Tarsus, furious and terrified but determined to live, then flinging himself into space jumps and chasing maniacs across the quadrant, and cheating a death that by all rights should have claimed him, he still managed to survive by the skin of his teeth. Bones used to call it a death wish, but it wasn’t, not at all. In that other timeline, his own counterpart was already dead and gone. In occasional bouts of morbidity, he wondered when his number would come up for good. Those times he really hated the inside of his own mind.

Spock was the scientist. Watching him chart the heavens or weave and whittle, it gave Jim something to get up for every morning on this godforsaken planet. He knew Spock’s footfall on the cliff above the cave, his smell after he’d bathed in his oils, the cadence of his breath on the nights he slept close by on the pallet. If he didn’t have something, someone, to keep him occupied, to rely on and to watch out for, Jim didn’t know if he’d still be here. What would be the point anymore? The universe obviously had it in for him. But Spock was here, and always had been there to keep him out of trouble. Spock was the reason a thousand times over that he was still alive.


	10. Chapter 10

“You are hereby ordered to the Novareen system for support and defense,” the Admiral concluded.

Scotty took a deep breath, “Er. Tha’s pretty far from our current position, sir.”

Komack lifted his furry brows. “Not so far that you can’t get there in a few hours.”

“It’s just…you asked us to keep an eye on the Romulan movements. Sir.”

“You were ordered to do that after you antagonized them by breaching the Neutral Zone agreement and putting us in a perilous position while we’re already dealing with these Klingon incursions. Are they making any moves?”

“We…” Scotty hesitated. Uhura rose from her station to stand beside his chair. “My chief comms officer, Lieutenant Uhura, sir.”

“The Romulan movements have been mirroring ours, sir,” she said, “We’ve picked up intelligence that they might be targeting our monitoring stations in a retaliatory strike. Outpost 23 is particularly vulnerable. We’re concerned that if we leave our post here, they might make a play.”

“Because you people pissed them off,” grumbled Komack, shaking his jowls, “No, the situation in Novareen is critical at this point, there are citizens at risk. You’re needed there.”

Scotty bit his tongue. He knew all too well what it was like to be marooned on a bleak Federation outpost. It had been Jim—and Spock, in a way—who had freed him from that cold, dark place. Were the poor bastards stationed at Outpost 23 so expendable? Were the two finest officers in Starfleet just as disposable? “Sir, all due respect, Starfleet isnae a military—”

“Don’t quote the treatise at me, Scott,” snapped Komack. “We may not be military, but we are the frontline of defense for these people.”

“Of course, sir, but—”

“Until our new ships are off the ground, the flagship has the tactical advantage we need out there right now,” said the Admiral, “Aid and assist the fleet, as you are ordered. It’ll do our people good to see the _Enterprise_ out there.”

Scotty exhaled through his nose, the waver in it unheard by all but the officer standing beside his chair. The back of Uhura’s knuckles pressed against his forearm on the armrest, an unseen gesture of support.

“Admiral, will we be allowed to return to patrolling the Neutral Zone afterwards?” Sulu asked.

“ _If_ our ongoing issues in the Novareen system are resolved, _we’ll see_ ,” the Admiral said with a shake of his head, with the air of a parent capitulating, “Kirk’s single-minded attitude has rubbed off on the lot of you.”

“We’d just really like to get him and the rest of our people back, sir,” said Sulu with a friendly smile, “Remaining on patrol out here is our best bet to do that.”

“Just get your asses to Novareen, double time. Komack out.”

Scotty wilted as soon as the feed cut, pinching the bridge of his nose. Ever since they’d made the difficult trip along the Romulan-Klingon border back into Fed Space, the Admiralty—and Komack in particular—seemed to be rallying against them at every turn. It was true, they had violated the agreement, but they had been given no choice by the Romulans themselves, and now the Admiralty was repeatedly denying their every bid to go back, assigning them to milk runs and skirmishes with no plan to even move back into Beta Quad at all. They were certain any approach back in that direction would be construed as an act of war. Taking the assignment to patrol the Neutral Zone was their best and only way to allow Uhura to scan the most likely sectors for any transmission that might prove to the Admiralty that their officers were still alive, and worth going back for. But with every week and month that passed by, that possibility dwindled, especially in the eyes of the Admiralty. 

“Uhura, send a message to our outposts to batten down the hatches and take cover.”

“Aye, sir,” she pressed her palm to Scotty’s shoulder as she turned back to her station.

He stood from the chair with sigh, “Helm, lay in a course to the Novareen system. Maximum warp. The faster we get there, the faster we come back.”

Sulu input the course, “Helm bearing 345, mark 46.”

“We should arrive there in about 5 hours at Warp 5.5, sir,” Chekov added.

“Fine,” Scotty muttered, craving a drink but knowing that would have to wait as well. “Call me when we get there.”

 

The skirmish in the Novareen system did not go as planned. There were eight Klingon vessels to the Federation’s five, as the sixth ship, the USS _Ivanhoe_ was catastrophically damaged by the time the _Enterprise_ arrived. While attempting to tow the disabled ship out of the battle zone, three more Warbirds had decloaked and destroyed the remains. Schrapnel from the blast had collided into several of their own decks. Scotty lost some of his engineers to a hull breach, with many more wounded, and the Novareen Station took civilian losses anyway. They were currently docked for repairs at Starbase 12.

When Uhura went looking for him, it was with some idea of where he could be found. He was unlikely to leave the ship, even off duty—not when she was being worked on. She knew the look of a man, especially this man, dangling from the very end of his rope. The last few months had been especially hard for the crew, but for Scotty most of all.

Keenser pointed her deep into the inner workings of the aft nacelle power routers. One boot hung lazily from an open access panel and a near empty bottle of scotch corked on its side nearby.

She paused and sighed, picking up the bottle before climbing in with him and laying a hand on his knee. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Aye, wasne my fault, was the cap’ns fault,” he muttered, his accent thickened exponentially with drink, “An’ tha’s me. Acting Cap’n.”

“It would have happened regardless,” she shook her head, peering up into the long, dim jeffries above their heads. “We were outnumbered. It was a bad situation all around.”

“Regular shitshow,” he said with a humorless laugh, and groping for the scotch again, “Jes’ like every other mission since my arse fell into a seat t’wa’nt mine tae begin with.”

“Monty,” she chided, moving the bottle out of his reach. Then she huffed, pulling the cork to take a swig for herself with a wince.

“Lost eleven of me lads today,” he said mournfully, a tear slipping from his eye, “Eleven good lads. I lost them. Me.”

She nodded soberly. There was a team out there right now, patching the breach that had done it. Ordinarily Scotty would be overseeing the process with an eagle eye, but she understood why he couldn’t bring himself to now.

“This isnae what I joined Starfleet for,” he muttered.

“I know,” she said, wrapping her arms around her knees and rested her head on his shoulder. “Me neither.”

“I’m an engineer. I can keep this lady flyin’, patch her up with spit and a prayer and have her carry us home safe, ya ken?” Scotty spoke tearfully, “She’s made of metal and fire and dreams, this ship. Her lifeblood is her crew, and her beating heart is her captain. And I cannae do what goldshirts do, I cannae be that man. I cannae let her _bleed_.”

 

Scotty stepped out of the Ready Room, pausing briefly at the Engineering station to check the readouts, listening to the finely tuned melody of bleeps and hums, then slowly surveyed the entire Bridge, all working in fine tandem once again. Sulu rose from the captain’s chair and returned to the helm with a nod, “All’s well, sir.”

“We’ve been in touch with the officers on Outpost 23,” Uhura added, “They’re a bit shaken from the strafing they took, but with a few minor repairs, the outpost is still safe and operational.”

“Let them know we’d be happy to assist with their repairs.”

“Already done, sir,” she replied, “They say thanks, but they’ve got it well in hand.”

He nodded, standing beside the captain’s chair, fingers stroking along the armrest, and looked out to the streak of stars at warp from the forward viewscreen, heading back again towards their original position along the Neutral Zone. The Admiral had conceded their return after a week with much grumbling, and at the prompting of Captain McNally of the USS _Lexington_ , a sympathetic friend of Jim’s who had also been present at Novareen.

This chair represented a position Scotty was qualified for, by rank and by chain-of-command. He was technically capable of manning each of the stations in this room if needs must, having had his own hands deep in each and every panel beneath them at one time or another, and in that of her predecessor. He knew every rivet in her hull and quite often felt intensely protective of her, but this beautiful silver lady did not belong to him. Frankly, he didn’t think she really belonged to Starfleet either—to an organization that used and abused her however it saw fit, though the paperwork stated otherwise.

Scotty pressed the comm button on the arm of the chair without sitting, “Dr. McCoy to the Bridge fer a tic, if you don’ mind.” He let the button go with a nod, “Status report, all stations.”

As the Bridge crew rattled off their data points in order, McCoy arrived through the turbolift doors, scanning the room and then pausing to look at the captain’s chair as the status roll came to an end. He crossed his arms over his chest with a headshake. “Still doesn’t feel right, every time I come up here and Jim ain’t where he’s supposed to be. No offense.”

“Aye, none taken, Doctor. I agree,” Scotty said, taking in a deep breath. “Mr. Sulu.”

“Yes sir,” the helmsman answered, standing to face him at parade rest in the middle of the Bridge. He’d spoken to the fine young man the day before to give him a quiet head’s up. He wasn’t quite sure being thrown to the lions was any better with a warning, but it had been shite without one.

“I relinquish the station and duties of Acting Captain to you, Mr. Sulu, on grounds that I am unfit for the station. I have noted the date and time of this change in the ship’s log,” he recited.

Sulu took this with only a blink betraying the enormity of the task, “I relieve you, sir.”

Scotty nodded, turning to the doctor, “So, I suppose I’ll return to quarters unless ordered otherwise.”

“The hell you will,” McCoy scowled, whipping out his tricorder for a quick scan, “I think you’d better serve us all back where you belong in Engineering, unless you’re unfit for that station too.”

“Report to Engineering, Mr. Scott,” said Sulu, with pat on his shoulder. Scotty nodded with considerable gratitude, and turned to leave. Uhura offered him a kind, sympathetic nod as he passed.

“Lieutenant Uhura,” Sulu paused, “I’ll need a First Officer, if you would be willing.”

She pulled her eyes from the sadness within Scotty’s and nodded to the request. “Yes, sir. Of course.”

“Then I’ll note a field promotion in the ship’s log.”

Her resigned, “Thank you sir,” was the last thing Monty heard on the Bridge before the turbo lift doors slid closed.

“Engineering,” he requested into the sudden quiet. He listened to the lift’s hover rigging activate and whoosh down through the decks, his ears finely attuned to the precise nuance of sounds as it smoothly changed tracks, leaving the saucer and proceeding down the neck. It was broken by an all-ship broadcast of Sulu formally announcing the leadership changeover. He closed his eyes, listening as the acknowledgements of each department head followed. His own turn came out of his mouth with ease, but the heavy weight he wished would leave his own shoulders remained.

There were plenty of sayings about wearing the red shirt and he knew them all well enough, but in Montgomery Scott’s humble opinion, it was the gold that carried the greatest burden. He’d carry it too, now, for the rest of his life.

He reached out and put a hand on the bulkhead with a nod and a murmur, “You’re in good hands, lass. We’ll be alright.”


	11. Chapter 11

“What are you carving?” Spock asked, settling on the rock overhang above the pool beside Jim, with a freshly cut supply of reeds to weave another basket.

“Fishhooks,” Jim answered.

The dry season continued its relentless heat, baking in the sun-drenched clearings and humid as a sauna underneath the canopy of the forest. Jim had long since abandoned wearing clothes for just his underwear, and he’d gone through enough burn-and-peel cycles now to be as tanned and freckled as he could get. Even Spock rarely wore a shirt, though he remained pale as ever.

After morning chores, Jim spent long hours of his days at the waterfall. While he had mostly left the deep, dark areas of the pool to the creature since their initial encounter, it apparently hadn't agreed to the same terms. More and more often, it would lunge out at him from a new, different hiding place each time, from nearly anywhere but the wide open center, where the water then flowed out of the pool and joined the river, making it nearly impossible for him to avoid an encounter. It would snap its wide, froggy mouth as it slithered by, lined with sharp teeth, as if to say, _if I was big enough, you’d be lunch_.

Because of this, Jim had started keeping his knife ready at hand when he swam, deciding that the assholefish, as he’d dubbed it—though he supposed it wasn’t technically a fish, it had stubby little webbed feet and claws—was going to be his next supply of protein. It was a problem that needed to be addressed, so it might as well be useful. But each time they crossed paths, he either wasn’t fast enough, or its scales were hard enough to deflect his blade. Thus, he began thinking of other ways he might capture and kill it. 

The fact that it was aquatic and possibly more armored than the typical land critter on this planet threw a spanner in his usual method. Though he had initially said he wouldn’t set snares again, in truth, that ended up being the simplest way to hunt in the forest. He wasn’t a good shot with a primitive bow, and arrows that flew straight were especially difficult to make and too valuable to break or lose. Instead, he would set up only a single snare on a known animal trail, then hunker down nearby to watch and wait. That way, once his prey was caught in the snare, he quickly jumped out to finish the job with his knife or spear. It was effective, and he still made sure the animals didn’t suffer.

In this case, the easiest route might have been to coax the assholefish out of its hiding place with some kind of bait, and aim a wide dispersal phase blast to that part of the pool with the hope of stunning it long enough to dive in and finish it off. Unfortunately, both of their phasers were now pretty much dead, without enough juice left to stun the average treehopper. They had stopped carrying them weeks ago, relying instead on the obsidian-tipped spears Spock had made for protection. The tricorder and the communicators had died sometime before that, without any nearby power source from which to draw their charge.

He’d also tried spearing it, but it rarely came close enough to the surface in an open area, away from the rocks. A hurled spear lost forward momentum with every inch of water it went through. Obsidian wasn’t that common, and he didn’t want to break any more of the spear tips Spock had made than he had already.

So, wooden fishhooks it was. His first attempt had been too brittle and probably too small, getting tangled up in the water plants and snapping in half. This time he was working from the gnarled knuckle from a heavy type of tree branch he hoped would be harder and stronger.

While Spock observed his efforts, he said nothing, and Jim didn’t ask for his help out of deference for his cultural beliefs on the subject. In pursuing the pool creature, though, there was an palpable element of discord between them. Unlike the pig-things or the deerlings that had been the majority of Jim’s quarry, this animal was predatory, mean-tempered, and it fought back. Spock still didn’t like that he continued to swim in the pool knowing it was in there and didn’t like that he couldn’t persuade him to stop. 

The majority of the other forest animals, even those that were predatory, like the mortimanges, treeweasels and even the hellbeasts, had a mutual respect of them, sharing the area and giving each other ample space, and this thing wasn’t following the rules. The pool was part of Jim’s territory, the one place he could go to escape the punishing heat. He’d claimed it months ago, and he wasn’t happy about sharing it with a temperamental fish that had decided to grow too big for its britches, so to speak. He knew Spock disapproved, but he wasn’t going to stop until he caught it. If nothing else, it would give him a few weeks worth of meat, and it gave him something to do, a way to keep his mind and his hands occupied.

A Vulcan, Jim privately thought, with his superior speed and strength could probably kill it easily, if Spock was predisposed to killing asshole animals, and if he didn’t hate to get his pretty hair wet.

Spock merely pulled his long hair back, quickly braiding it out of his way before he began to weave his reeds with those long, dextrous, nimble fingers. Hands that, more often than not these days, drew Jim’s attention.

Jim was, perhaps more than most people, well acquainted with Vulcan strength. Ever since that time Spock had summarily handed him his ass on the Bridge for insulting his mother, he’d known better than to provoke him again. No one knew, not even Bones, that Jim hadn’t been able to hear out of his right ear or swallow quite right for about two months after that encounter. He learned over the course of about fifteen seconds that he could not beat him in an all-out fight. Even all these years later, when they sparred in the ship’s gym and crowds accumulated to watch, Jim knew Spock was pulling every punch, moving just that much slower than he was capable of, and sometimes even allowing for the illusion that Jim could beat him, so that he didn’t lose face as captain.

But he’d also watched him with Uhura, off-duty in the Mess or the Observation Lounge or out on the town on a starbase, how tender and careful and courteous Spock had always been with her, this incredible lioness of a woman that he’d been dating for…Jim didn’t even know how long. Rumor had it they’d been together since she was a cadet, though few people believed Commander Spock would ever dare to break such a rule as fraternizing with a student. Then again, most people didn’t know him, and that was precisely how Spock liked it. That mysteriousness kept the vast majority of people at a distance, including Jim.

When he’d briefly entertained the idea of the Vice Admiralty on Yorktown, it hadn’t even crossed his mind that Spock wouldn’t be there with him. Spock had never wanted a command of his own, and there had been plenty of scientific opportunities on the station in the year they were stationed there. He and Uhura and even Chekov had taken up research and teaching positions in that time. Bones had worked in the Medical facilities, Sulu had worked in Ben’s botany lab, and Scotty, of course, had overseen the rebuild.

But when Spock had told him months afterward that he’d considered not just leaving Starfleet, but going back to New Vulcan, Jim had been stunned by his own visceral negative reaction. He hated it. He actively sought Spock’s company after that. He wanted to argue about it, talk him out of it, but there had been no need. He already had Spock’s assurances that he intended to complete the remainder of the five year mission once the ship was rebuilt. But Spock had still kept him at arm’s length, cut off from the closeness he’d thought they once had, a closeness that had all but disappeared after Khan. A closeness he felt like they didn’t have even here, living more on top of each other than that shared bathroom on the _Enterprise_.

For the most part, he attributed his interest to the fact that Spock was literally the only other person on this stupid planet to look at. Here, there wasn’t a lot else to occupy himself. And with the long trip out to uncharted space, it had probably been over two years now since he’d last gotten laid, for fuck’s sake. Almost anything would look good.

Not that he hadn’t thought about Spock that way before. Ages before, when they’d first sized each other up in that fateful academic hearing, he’d thought that if Spock didn’t have such a giant stick up his ass, he might be kind of attractive. Hell, he’d wondered what it would take to loosen the guy up, and if that might be part of the fun. Spock was hot, and back in those days, Jim would sleep with just about anyone.

But then he’d been given the ship and all the responsibilities that came with it, and everything got a lot more serious. He’d seen his best friends settle down. He’d seen Bones and Carol spend a decent year together before she’d accepted a promotion to be Chief Science Officer aboard the USS _Magellan_ —Bones had taken it hard, the big old mush. He’d officiated Hikaru and Ben’s wedding and thrown them a party when their daughter was born. Spock and Uhura had seemed happy for years, right up until they apparently weren’t. 

And anyway, Jim had grown the hell up since. He was thirty-two—probably thirty-three, now? Not only was he not the settling-down type, he knew it wasn’t his place. Captains led lonely lives; that was how it had been since antiquity. Either they left partners in some port-of-call with the potential of never returning, or they remained perpetual bachelors and shore leave was any port in a storm. In a surprise to himself, Jim had grown tired even of that. Not that he didn’t have some regular friends-with-benefits who didn’t sell him out on a few different starbases, but the persistence of the tabloids had put a damper on his getting laid in any kind of discreet manner a long time ago. The Admiralty hounded him for any headline about 'Starfleet’s Intergalactic Playboy', even when he told them the correct phrasing would have been ‘interstellar’ and that he was hardly getting enough to be called a playboy. Fame was more of a pain than it was worth sometimes.

And now he was stuck far from anywhere with only a Vulcan to look at. A Vulcan that was hard-bodied, hairy in all the right places, and unapologetically half-naked most days.

But he stamped those thoughts down. Spock was his friend, and a good one, never mind the best XO Fleet had to offer. Jim had learned the value of those things with a lot of missteps.

He finished his fishhook, as big as his hand, its curve following that of the gnarl, carved to a sharp point and hopefully strong enough. He went back to the cave to retrieve their spool of paracord, tying the hook to its end and baiting it with one of his few remaining strips of jerky. He’d seen the assholefish a few minutes ago, moving in the shadows from below one of the rocky ledges to another. He tossed his hook in that direction and settled down to wait, holding onto the line to watch through the clear water.

Little schools of minnows flittered to and away from his bait, but it was a good half hour or more before they scattered as the assholefish slowly approached his lure. Jim held his breath, twisting a thick branch of wood through the cord to give him a better grasp. Spock had even stopped his work to watch.

When the creature finally opened its gaping mouth to suck in the bait, Jim yanked hard, and there was a swift, intense splashing commotion before the line abruptly went slack and Jim fell from his braced stance onto his ass, struggling up to quickly haul in the line. 

“Goddammit!” he groaned to see the end of the paracord come up, without the hook he’d spent hours carefully carving.

Spock said nothing, going back to his basket weaving.

That night, as they settled side by side on the bed, Jim started to get that weird, uncomfortable feeling again, buzzing in his ears and dread in his gut. Yellowface and Rosita were both slivers in the sky, dimmed more than usual to a reddish violet.

“Do you hear it?” he asked Spock beside him.

“Yes.”

“It’s going to happen again,” said Jim, “The Fury and the Darkness.”

“It is fortuitous,” said Spock, expanding when Jim turned his head to look at him, “We now have a baseline of time to expect between the simultaneous new moons of 8 Velarusan months, or 6.24 Standard months. We know what to expect, and when.”

The following day they made preparations, fortifying their barrier wall, moving their store of firewood from the big cave, Spock planting his torches and building up the outer fire to dissuade anything from approaching their small grotto. The hellbeasts again gathered on the clifftop, awaiting their easy meal. Spock removed his star-charting stick before they could topple it again.

Part of Jim wanted to go out to witness the whole spectacle again, to see the incredible dragon’s emergence, to see the flyers black out the stars with their millions. To search the skies for any trace of his ship, or others. But he knew the danger was too great, and he’d seen it once. He had to concede that it was far safer to stay inside and wait it out.

They closed themselves in, setting up their homemade chessboard between them on the sleeping pallet. They’d finished one game to Spock’s favor when the shrieking intensified as the sun went down, and the Fury burst from the big cave and ravaged the immediate area, and played through a second game to Jim’s win as the din spread out and mellowed deep into the night. They were halfway through a third game when Spock spoke, too quietly for Jim to hear beneath the noise.

“What’s that?” he moved his knight, stretching out on the bed propped on an elbow while Spock sat meditatively opposite.

“Starfleet does not leave people behind,” his XO repeated, “It is a core value of the organization. Therefore, they must come back for us.”

Jim frowned at the board. Spock trying to logic through why they were still fucking marooned out here after more than six Standard months meant even he was starting to have doubts. “Isn’t doubt a feeling?”

Spock looked up, brows raising, “Not necessarily. Doubt, by definition, is an uncertainty about what is true when when one may not possess all the facts. I have meditated on 43 possible scenarios for why we have yet to be rescued, based on those facts of which I can be certain. In each case, the only reason they would not have returned is if they believed us, beyond reasonable doubt, to be dead.”

“Yeah, well,” Jim huffed, “We’re out here on a planet far from anything where, as far as they know and from what our crew could have told them, nearly all of the colonists have died from disease or starvation or worse, and our ship was either chased away or blown up by unknown hostiles. They think we’re dead? It’s more likely than you think.”

“That is a pessimistic outlook, particularly for you, and which is also not in line with the tenets of Starfleet,” replied Spock, “Positivity and hope is paramount to our success as frontier explorers.”

Jim laughed, shaking his head, “God, I wish that was all it was. Go forth into the universe with utopian positivity to make friends with everybody, rainbows all around. Let’s pitch it to the Admiralty.”

“That is, in essence, what the Federation was founded upon, Captain,” Spock reminded him.

“Yeah, before we met Klingons and Romulans,” Jim smirked but then sobered. It was pretty hard to stay optimistic with the way things had been going the last few years. “Before we had rogue admirals building black ops military ships and recruiting a quarter of the few people we had to take a hardass offensive approach right under our noses.”

“Section 31 is no more,” said Spock, “And Starfleet is not a military organization, but an exploratory one.”

“Not according to the tenets they drill into us,” Jim replied, “But we both know it’s a grey issue, Spock, it’s never been black and white. We go out there exploring and we encounter hostile people or entities that want to kill us, or we deal with empires whose entire intention is to rule every part of the galaxy tyrannically, and we end up fighting military battles anyway. Our ship could have been blown out of the sky up there by one. There are people lobbying for us to militarize more than we already have, and they have even more clout now that the Klingons and Romulans have been getting more brazen. They’re building that new Dreadnaught-class ship—same blueprints as the _Vengeance_. They were supposed to start a few months after we left Alpha Quad on this mission, so it’s probably nearly done by now.”

“It is considered a Starfleet vessel, commissioned as such.”

“Under the purview of the Admiralty, built and eventually crewed by our officers. Starfleet officers on a ship purpose-built for warfare, Spock, there’s no other reason for its capabilities. They took Section 31 tech, declassified just because they couldn’t hide that it mowed down a large chunk of San Francisco, and slapped our badge on it,” Jim grumbled. “They might as well just split us into Exploratory and Military branches while they’re at it.”

“They would have considerable support from the public to do so,” Spock remarked, “They are also designing a new exploratory prototype based on some of the _Vengeance’s_ capabilities. Why not make use of superior technology when it is available?”

“Because of the intent behind it!” Jim argued, his dander up, though he knew Spock was simply playing devil’s advocate, as he often did, “You know that a true disbanding of Section 31 was unlikely. The Federation has a history of covering up any big mess that makes them look bad; they did it with Tarsus too. Khan and the _Vengeance_ was a great big public fuck-up that exposed them for a while, just like the Marcus trial and the clean-up was a show—they wrapped it all up with a big shiny bow to make the civilians feel safe. But 31’s been around since before the Federation, and Marcus wasn’t the only big uniform that had those kinds of hardass ideas. It’s still black ops level secrecy, all the way. It has no official oversight, Fleet or otherwise, and that’s just how they like it.”

“‘Absolute power corrupts absolutely’,” quoted Spock.

“Lord Acton,” Jim pointed at him in agreement, “Hell, it would be better if they did militarize us openly, rather than this back alley bullshit. I don’t doubt for a second that after the trial, whoever took over 31 didn’t just pick up and restart the whole operation somewhere else.”

Spock tightened his lips in a straight line before answering, “Perhaps. Which is why I have made a point to insert myself into positions where I may monitor and provide oversight wherever possible.”

“Yeah, but that’s the thing,” Jim gave a shake of his head, lifting a hand at Spock’s sharp look, “I know you got involved with good intentions, but I’m also sure that probably pissed some people off. You’ve kind of got a reputation for being a boy scout.”

“I have never been a boy scout,” Spock objected, retaliating against Jim’s knight on the chessboard, “Nor have I ever been an ideal Vulcan. Though as I have said before, I have no intention of correcting misconceptions to the contrary.”

“Yeah,” Jim grinned at that, moving his remaining bishop, “Thing is, right now, you’re completely out of the picture, Spock. So you can bet that anybody who’s dirty is definitely going to exploit your absence.”

“You are likely correct,” Spock conceded, with nearly a frown, “How did you come to this conclusion?”

“Because,” Jim huffed a breath through his nose, “You deal with enough pieces of shit in positions of power in your life, you get to know their mindset, how they think. It’s all about exploiting loopholes and throwing people under a bus.”

“I am surprised Section 31 did not attempt to recruit you. It was said they often recruited from the brightest of Starfleet’s ranks.” Spock moved his queen, “Check.”

“Not necessarily the brightest, but people who have nothing to lose,” Jim frowned, thinking back, “They might have tried. Ages ago, when I was a first year cadet. There were people trying to get me to go to these underground meetings. I shrugged them off; I had too many things going on back then, I tried to do too much too fast. And anyway, I was too close to Pike; he took over as my advisor right after that, forced me to streamline my course load. Chris took me right at my word—'Officer in three years',” he shook his head with fond sadness, “He probably knew what was up long before I caught on.”

“I, too, was close to Admiral Pike. I served under him for two years,” Spock said. “He was precisely the type of individual who would not subscribe to Section 31’s brand of strength in arms and secrecy, power without check or balance. Lesser men would perhaps become indoctrinated to that way of thinking.”

“Yeah. The rub is whether or not you can handle watching powerful people hurt the less fortunate, and turn a blind eye for your own gain. I’ve seen that shit my whole life. The Federation likes to pretend we’re better than that, but it still goes on. It always has.”

He sighed heavily, gave up the game and knocked over his king before stretching out to fold his arms behind his head, looking up at Spock. “You know, John Harrison, Khan’s alias? In that meeting at Daystrom when…when we lost Chris, Khan’s profile said he was one of the kids who survived Tarsus IV.”

Spock cocked his head, “You would have known him, if that was the case.”

“Yeah, but I couldn’t just bring up classified information like that at an all-heads table briefing, you know? That kind of thing is Alpha Level Eyes Only, it shouldn’t have been on a fugitive-at-large profile. I would know.”

“Marcus was the Head Admiral of Starfleet,” said Spock, “He would have had Alpha Level clearance and access to Tarsus IV files due to his position.”

“He was the one who woke Khan up and made up that bullshit backstory in the first place. I knew the Harrisons on Tarsus; I went to school with the real John Harrison. He died there, with his parents and his little sister. Point is, Marcus fucked up, didn’t do his homework.” Jim frowned further, scowling, “But maybe somebody did. Four of the other kids were murdered years ago. They never discovered who did it.”

“How did you know?”

“They warned me,” Jim said. “Pike pulled me out of my second year Tactical Analysis course and told me they were assigning me a personal security detail. God, it sucked. They interrogated Bones like they expected him to off me in my sleep. I couldn’t go anywhere alone for like three months before they finally let it go.”

“Marcus later allowed you to follow Khan to Qu’onos, with the assumption you would be killed in the process, before attempting your murder himself,” Spock pondered, “Perhaps he discovered your connection and realized his mistake.”

“Yeah,” Jim muttered darkly. “There are only a few of us left now. I was the oldest, and most of those kids were orphaned, in and out of foster homes until they were old enough, or they ran away. Jenni Saiko committed suicide. Kevin Riley was registered in the Academy before I was, but I don’t think he even completed a term; he’s been missing for years. And Tommy…that kid was never right afterwards. I heard he was committed to a secured care home on Antares Beta for the rest of his life.” He sighed, “All of us who came out of that place were fucked up, for sure, but Khan wasn’t one of us.”

“You would seem to be the most high profile of the survivors. Perhaps you were correct to assume that part of your file might eventually be compromised and released to the public.”

“Maybe I was wrong, though, maybe it’s wrong to keep it a secret,” Jim wondered, his expression faraway in his thoughts, “Everyone who survived Tarsus was kept anonymous. Everyone. Not just us kids, but the other 3211 people that Kodos had decided could live. The Fed had everyone sign a gag order, and most did it pretty willingly, some even changing their identities. Nobody wanted to own up to being the ‘ideal breeder’ that some eugenics-touting maniac decided could exist over someone else, even though they went right along with it.”

He shook his head in disgust, “Anything relating to that colony was put behind Alpha Level security across the board, except the very basics they tell civilians to keep them in check. The most they ever teach about it in Fed History is that a colonial governor made ‘an ill-reasoned judgement’ in rationing during a famine. They tell us that the people he executed died instantly and painlessly in an antimatter chamber—they didn’t. Anybody who escaped after the first round up was hunted down.” Jim shivered, shaking off the memories, “They call it a terrible rogue occurrence in our history by one bad apple, with emphasis on its historic nature, that it’s in the past. As if it happened centuries ago like other Pre-Fed atrocities that ‘would never happen now’, as if things like slavery and dictators and eugenics don’t still show up on every other planet we come across. And they spend all of maybe a single class period on it, so it goes in one ear and out the other in the minds of pretty much everyone who wasn’t directly affected.”

“Such is the way of many shameful events,” said Spock. “I myself did not learn of it until I arrived at the Academy. I questioned my professors on the history of Tarsus IV to a degree that they forbid me from asking further questions in class and instructed me to take my inquiries on the subject elsewhere.”

“Because you were smart enough to see through the layers of bullshit, ‘cause it doesn’t add up,” Jim glanced over at him, “You asked Pike, didn’t you?”

Spock nodded, “He insinuated that Tarsus was classified for good reason. This was some years prior to my introduction to you.”

“Pike knew a lot of my history, but he never knew about that, not until the murders. He always believed in Starfleet and the Federation, the way they say my dad did. That we're fundamentally good, and right, and well-governed by good people. But sometimes, Spock,” he sat up and rubbed at his ears, aching and throbbing from the shrieking of the Fury outside, “Sometimes I wonder if we haven’t just…gone back in time to the whole Exceptionalism mentality again, you know?”

“That is not how the Federation operates,” his First reminded him again, “Our mission is to learn, not to conquer.”

Jim sighed, “I know, but sometimes it’s at the expense of others. Like any other way of life must be wrong just because we believe we’re better, when we still haven’t learned from our past mistakes. We’ve gone on enough diplomatic missions to secure materials that we know can and will be used for nefarious purposes, knowing it's exploitive when they’re less advanced. It’s all relative.”

“Komack is now Head of Starfleet,” said Spock, “I am confident he is not allied with anyone who was involved in the Section 31 scandal. He was one of the fiercest proponents of seeking out and removing from service any admiral or officer who had passing affiliation with it. Starfleet is better for his leadership.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s the best person for the job. Komack’s an old school protectionist, and he hates me,” Jim grumbled, “He’s probably thrilled to be rid of me right now.”

“Yet you have remained the captain of Starfleet’s flagship, even under his leadership,” he said, “He could have you removed from that designation with little recourse at any time, but he has not done so. Why do you believe he hates you?”

“Hell if I know. Genetics?” Jim frowned, “Komack knew my parents. Mom said he and my dad, they had some sort of rivalry at the Academy, so maybe he hates me by proxy, I suppose. Pike never really got along with him either. And it’s up to him to decide whether or not we get rescued, isn’t it? Not the greatest odds for us.”

“It is up to him and 24 other senior Admirals,” Spock told him, gathering the pieces of their chessboard into a basket to set aside, then come back to the pallet to lie down beside Jim, folding his hands neatly over his stomach. “There are many other factors. My father is highly respected by the Federation Council, and your mother is a decorated officer. Our crew is well-liked, both within the service and by the civilian public. A starship runs on loyalty, Captain.”

“Yeah,” Jim said, “But the loyalty has to run up the chain of command, it doesn’t stop with me, it _shouldn’t_ stop with me. We’re just two guys, Spock. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

“That is true,” Spock agreed, “But I cannot believe that our friends would give up on us so easily.”

“If they’re still out there at all,” Jim muttered.

The darkest night passed over them outside, and the Fury’s screams again grew intense as they returned to their underground lair. When Jim and Spock emerged into the startlingly quiet morning, the devastation of the forest was similar to the previous time, with the trees shredded and many forest animals ravaged. But strangely, one thing had been missing.

As they examined the large cave opening, the pool and the banks of the river, there were no huge tracks or salt-encrusted scales left behind this time. They had not heard the roars, nor felt the shudders of the behemoth emerging from the cavern, only the screams and whooshing wings of millions of Fury into the night. 

“Why didn’t the dragon come out?” Jim asked.

“I do not know.”


	12. Chapter 12

“You are constructing a net?” 

“Yeah,” Jim answered, unspooling more of the paracord from its reel. It was his latest idea to catch the assholefish. It had taken most of a day to figure out how to weave and tie it to work the way he wanted, and he was finally making some progress.

But Spock’s eyebrows gathered, “You will use the remainder of our primary source of cordage for that purpose.”

“Maybe,” he countered, defensively shrugging, “Once I’m done with it, I can take it apart and wind it back up.”

His commander exhaled through his nose and straightened, though it was hard to take Spock at parade rest seriously when he was shirtless and covered in fruit goop from pounding and pressing oil. “Captain, I would dissuade you once again from your attempts to kill the creature.”

“I’m sure you would,” Jim sardonically muttered.

“It is aggressive and only becomes more hostile with your efforts. The waterfall pool is the animal’s territory.”

“We were here first.”

“As the animal is endemic to this planet, logically, it was here prior to our arrival,” Spock argued, “The animal was most likely small enough to go unnoticed at that time and less likely to attack a Human who could easily bathe in the shallows instead of deliberately continuing to provoke it.”

Jim shook his head and continued his work—they’d just have to agree to disagree. He was going to catch the fucking thing, one way or another. Spears hadn’t worked, fishhooks hadn’t worked, traps hadn’t worked. He’d spent more than a month on this now, even having to snare small treehoppers to use just for bait, having long since run out of his supply of jerky. Each time he failed, he only grew more determined.

The following morning when he woke, he dressed in his thermal pants rather than just his skivvies. The temperatures were still too warm for Jim’s taste, but nowadays a nice breeze had begun to blow down from the mountains and occasional clouds formed to offer shade. This morning it was less for warmth, however, and more for an added layer of protection. He slung his belt on, with his Fleet knife clipped in its holster on his hip. He’d used a river stone to sharpen it the night before.

He waited until Spock was engrossed in his chores—in this morning’s case, pounding more fibrous goop to dry into paper. He had stashed his finished net in the big cave the previous night, where he could retrieve it easily and head to the pool unharassed. Over the months they’d been here, Spock had generally conceded to letting Jim wander on his own, as long as he remained within shouting distance in case of emergency. He knew Jim went off gathering or hunting in the mornings. Jim neither wanted to provoke another argument this morning, nor to have Spock watch his efforts.

The assholefish had a daily routine that Jim had by now memorized, moving around the pool from beneath one rocky ledge to another as the sun moved across the sky. He had a plan, and it depended on the animal sticking to its usual pattern. He perched on the ledge closest to where the pool shallowed and flowed out into the river with his net in hand to wait. 

It wasn’t any different from watching a snare set on an animal trail, hours passing sometimes for a deerling or a pig-thing to come by and spring the trap. 

As a boy, Jim had always struggled with being still. He’d always had that nervous energy, a need to be busy and loud and in constant motion. Later circumstances had driven him to hone his self-control. Hiding, staying quiet and unseen had become a matter of life and death on Tarsus. Afterwards, in the time between that and Pike finding him in a Riverside bar, he’d nearly reverted fully back, into a bitter, troubled ‘manbaby' as Uhura had called him once years ago, with no direction and plenty of stupid reasons to pick a fight. Some days, especially out here, he still felt like that lost, angry kid who had no fucking idea what he was doing. 

But that wasn’t who he was anymore. Now he was a grown man, a Starfleet captain, a respectable member of society. He’d faked it ’til he made it, and the fact that it worked was almost as absurd as the fact that anyone found him respectable.

Jim exhaled, shoving those old thoughts from his mind, refocusing as the assholefish slowly poked its boxy head from beneath its hiding place in preparation to move to the next, the ledge just beneath him. He needed to concentrate now.

As it finally swam out into the open, Jim sprang to action, opening his net wide and jumping down on top of it in ambush with a splash. Immediately, the assholefish retaliated, spinning and thrashing, but this time it worked in Jim’s favor as the animal entangled itself further in his net. It writhed and fought as he gripped the netting tight, swimming hard until he found his footing at the mouth of the river, dragging the wriggling net with all his strength into the pebbled shallows and flattening himself atop it to unclip his knife.

His first several stabs glanced off its armored scales, the animal bucking and making belching noises and growls in the shallow water. He tried to hold the head down to aim for one of its tiny eyes, but one stubby claw poked through the net, flicking his knife from his grasp and nearly flopping back towards the pool when he went after it. Jim threw himself over the net again, but the fish wriggled and spun, somehow managing to throw its long, strong body across his, entangling him as well. Jim scrambled in the water where he was pinned, clutching one of the creature’s short legs tightly with one hand, trying to grope for his knife with the other. A claw suddenly pushed down on his neck, pressing him nearly under the water, its gaping maw croaking in his face, and—

_—he was fourteen and fighting for his life, the soldier straddled atop him in a drainage ditch between rotting fields of grain. He’d flung the man’s phaser away, but big strong hands held him down, and wide, yellow teeth in a manic grin laughed at his terror, pushing him under the fetid, slimy water. He writhed and bucked in the mud, his hand flailing around for something, anything, groping fingers finding a broken, rusted irrigation pipe. He yanked it free, screaming with his mouth full of mud, dragging the soldier down and stabbing him in the back with the pipe again and again and again—_

“—ptain! Captain!” a voice solidified out of the screams. A strong hand gripped his arm, and Jim ripped the knife out, refocusing his rage.

“Enough!” Spock shouted, swiftly blocking Jim’s attack and disarming him, sending him windmilling backward, tripping and falling on his ass with a splash.

Spock stood over him, tossing Jim’s knife to the sandy bank. “The animal is dead.”

Jim curled up fetally in the shallow water, away from Spock’s eyes, coughing up fresh water as he was thrown back to the present once again. He could feel hot tears mingling with the cold river water on his face. He pushed back his wet, overlong hair, seeing the twisted, unmoving body of the assholefish tangled in the net beside him—not Kodo’s soldier—its white, almost translucent belly exposed to the sky and a spreading dark red cloud billowing from the multiple wounds Jim had inflicted into the bubbling water flowing around it and into the river.

“Are you all right?” Spock asked from above him, “Captain, have you been you injured?”

“I’m fine,” Jim said shortly, before actually sitting up and taking stock of himself. He had some scratches and scrapes on his arms and chest from the animal’s hard scales and its claws. Nothing felt particularly grievous, but that long forgotten fear kept his adrenaline pounding. 

Spock knelt beside him, reaching for his face to lift his chin, ostensibly to see the scratch stinging on his throat.

“I’m fine,” he repeated, shoving the hand away, swiping his palm over his face. Spock had touched him in the middle of all that. Had he felt Jim’s terror? Did he see the memory of what he had done all those years ago?

Spock’s eyes crawled over him, his own hair, torso and pants drenched from fighting with Jim in the water, but he slowly nodded. He looked down at the dead animal with an unreadable expression, then he stood and walked away.

Jim sat for long minutes in the cold, rocky shallows, watching the blood wash downriver. It had been years since he’d been visited by that particular memory. He’d tried to leave it far behind on that dead colony planet, kept it bricked up in a dark, unvisited corner of his mind. He’d avoided the nightmares by avoiding sleep, distracting himself with drink and sex, fights and reckless petty crimes. Then he’d suddenly found a new challenge to try for, he’d found respect, he’d found Starfleet and the _Enterprise_ and friends. He’d found his purpose. He had a life.

And now it felt like all of that was gone again, and he was just that lost, flailing delinquent who had murdered a man. That soldier had been the first person he’d killed. He recalled the terror and rage and triumph and ultimate shame in the killing, the emotions of a furious child trying to survive. Later on, he had sent men out on missions and had them not return, he had even set his phaser to kill on a few occasions, and been compelled to use it. He had killed people and gotten people killed in the line of duty, and the service provided good counseling for that. He thought he’d grown past this. But no one knew about the very first one, Kodos’ man whose body he’d left there in the mud on Tarsus IV. No one knew about that. No one was ever supposed to know about that.

 _Fuck_. He sniveled a snotty, wavery breath and held it against the hot tears that readily flowed, sat in the cool water beside the body of the assholefish. He’d done it, finally killed this stupid thing he’d obsessed over for months, and there was no triumph in it this time either. There never was. Every time he made a kill, even though it was for food and for his well-being, he felt ashamed.

Lugging himself up, he retrieved his knife and dragged the body in his net a good kilometer away from the pool, down the river where he typically did his butchering.

He untangled the animal from his net, examining the damage. The fight had broken several spots in the paracord, but he’d salvage as much of it as he could, wind it back up on its spool to be used elsewhere. He had no more use for the net any longer. He never wanted to hunt with it again.

He grimaced as he got into the dirty business of cleaning the animal, holding his breath at the stench of its innards, far stinkier than his usual quarry. 

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up at the sound of approaching footfalls on the sandy bank, turning to find Spock striding toward him. Of course, his expression was wiped carefully blank. What had Spock seen in his mind? How dare he touch him in that moment, and see _that_. The shame burned hot in his throat.

“What do you want?” he peered up at him.

Spock paused, folding his hands behind him. He’d dried himself off as best as he could, and tied back his damp hair. “I would observe, if you would allow me.”

Jim narrowed his eyes, “You never watch me butcher animals.”

“My interest is scientific,” Spock looked down at the body. “This creature is dissimilar to others you have hunted for food. Its internal biology may be different as well.”

Jim frowned down at the mess he was elbows-deep in. “Looks like the same guts to me,” he said with a grimace and a cough, “Smells a lot worse.”

Spock said nothing, simply watching as Jim finished the gross task, letting his commander examine the entrails before he took them out to the deep water and let the river carry them away. The rest of the carcass he washed before heaving it up on his shoulders to lug to their cave front to be cooked.

But as he’d spitted part of the tail over the fire, the smell of it only got less appetizing, an acrid, sulfurous odor that put off an oily black smoke. Spock wrinkled his nose and moved upwind.

Jim choked down a few bites of the meat once it was cooked, but it was so vile, he ended up excusing himself to the woods and vomited it back up, and the shame burned even worse. He tried again, but his stomach still rebelled against it.

By the time evening was setting in, he hauled the rest of the carcass out to the barren area of the long treefall, and dug a hole to bury the rest. A shallow grave for an unnecessary kill, one that he couldn’t even make use of for food. He hated that he’d done this, and that it had brought this back up, the bad memory he’d so desperately tried to forget.

He sat beside the filled pit, aware of the itch of the numerous scratches and scrapes the creature had left him with. One on his inner thigh particularly stung, and he peered at it through the rip it had torn through his pants. It was maybe a bit deeper than the others since it had bled a bit, though now that it had stopped, it was pretty small and didn’t look too serious.

When he returned to the camp, Spock sat by the fire, with the medical kit and the chessboard set up beside him, an obvious conciliatory gesture.

“You have discarded the animal’s remains?” he asked as Jim sat down.

He scowled at his feet with a fresh pang of guilt, “Don’t rub it in.”

“I do not intend to ‘rub it in’,” Spock replied. “You cannot be expected to consume that which does not agree with your digestion.”

Jim shook his head, “It’s a waste. I feel shitty about it.”

“You did not know it would disagree with you,” Spock opened the medical kit, “However, your wounds should be addressed.”

“It’s nothing,” said Jim, “Just some scratches from the scales, I guess. They’re not deep.”

Spock removed their pot from the coals, plucking the rag he’d boiled from it with chopsticks, “They should be cleaned and antiseptic applied, nonetheless.”

Jim reached out to grab the rag, wringing it out quickly, “I’ll do it.” He didn’t need Spock touching him again, seeing any more of his humiliation. He swiped at each of the scratches, following with a smear to each from the tube of antiseptic.

“The dragon, as you call it, is similar to the creature from the pool,” commented Spock.

Jim frowned, wondering what he was getting at. “You think they were related?”

“The dragon, as well as the flying creatures, only emerges from the depths of the cave on the night of simultaneous new moons. The animal from the pool also appeared to avoid direct sunlight.”

“Maybe it was light sensitive too, I dunno,” he shrugged, remembering how it always seemed to stay out of the sunny spots of the pool. “But it was active in the daytime.”

“On occasion,” Spock countered, looking pointedly at him, “Often, because it had been disturbed by another large animal encroaching within its territory.”

Jim scowled, swiping the oily salve from his fingers onto his pants. The wound on his inner thigh twinged, but he left that one alone, not wanting to draw attention there. Spock would probably insist that it be bandaged, and he really didn’t need his commander getting up close and personal between his legs, not like that, anyway.

“I have been thinking on the nature of the Darkness and the Fury,” Spock continued. “We begin to hear the sounds of the Fury’s movement days before the emergence. They inhabit the caves to hide from the light, but near enough to the surface to sense the change, whether by posting a sentinel near the entry, sensing differences in tidal gravity, or by some other means. I would theorize that when the Fury begin to awaken, the Darkness hears their calls and, if it is in her interest, begins her long ascent from the deep. On the evening of the new moons, they emerge together.”

“Her?” It wasn’t like Spock to gender something without full knowledge of its nature, but he was intrigued by the idea.

“The dragon did not emerge with the Fury during the most recent new phase, which leads me to believe it does so in accordance with a different cycle, not simply that of the new moons, but perhaps a more specific purpose, such as reproduction.”

Jim considered, “If it’s amphibious, like you said, then it’s too dry up here right now. Last time was during the rains.”

“A valid point, and relevant to my next theory,” Spock concurred, “I believe the creature from the pool was either a juvenile or a male of the same species.”

Seeing Jim’s interest, he continued, “Perhaps while on the surface, the Darkness lays eggs or births live young into the pool or river, while the water is high and the air cool.”

Frowning, Jim shook his head, “The assholefish, the one in the pool, it had eyes, though, and the dragon didn’t.”

“Eyes are relevant to a surface dwelling creature, but not one that exists in pure darkness,” Spock nodded, “Studies of megafauna on several planets have concluded that they typically exhibit an extremely low metabolic rate, sometimes feeding only once in a Standard year or similar timeframe. The young, however, generally must feed more often. I postulate the spawn of this species remains on the surface, in water, where it feeds and develops until it is large enough to descend into the caves and endure long periods of fasting. As it continues to grow to adult size, the eyes are no longer necessary and are reabsorbed.

“A second hypothesis: it is a dimorphic species, in which the comparatively tiny surface dwelling male attaches himself to the female to mate as she passes over the pool in which he lives. The compulsion to mate is strong enough to bring such a massive creature to the surface.

“A third, and in my opinion least likely theory: perhaps she encounters a male of similar size on her travels during the moonless night. As we have been largely confined during the new moons and are limited to a few square hectares of forest, we have no way of knowing if others may emerge from similar cave systems.”

“But you’re assuming they reproduce in a gendered system at all,” Jim put in, “They might reproduce asexually, or some other way. We still have no idea how any of the animals here reproduce. We’ve seen the babies, but never any nests or eggs, or watched them mating or being born or anything. From what I’ve seen butchering, their internal organs are pretty simplistic—there’s an in and an out, no extras. If they have gender, I can’t tell the difference.”

“Yes, I observed that as well. It is entirely possible they exhibit parthenogenetic reproduction or heterogamy, combinations of sexual and asexual reproduction to suit the environment. We cannot be certain without further study, which, in our current situation, is rather unsafe.”

Jim shook his head, “But it’s all endlessly fascinating to you.”

“Indeed.”

“Always a scientist,” Jim said, but then scowled, “You’re still mad that I killed it, though. Yet you still let me do it.”

“I am not ‘mad’, nor did I ‘allow’ you to do it, Captain,” the Vulcan retorted, looking away. “I cannot force my ethics on you, as you do require protein in your diet. I attempted several times to dissuade you from pursuing this particular animal, but you are often a stubborn individual.”

Jim rolled his eyes, “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.” He reached over to the chessboard and randomly moved a pawn. 

“No, it does not, unless, as per my speculation, another of the creatures appears within the pool.”

Shaking his head, Jim muttered, “I wouldn’t go after it again, anyway.” 

Spock nodded, cocking his head thoughtfully as he played a pawn of his own, “This planet is currently several thousand years into a glacial period. This region along the equator comprises approximately 2.35 million square kilometers of habitable landmass, roughly similar in size to that of Earth’s remaining protected rainforest. The Darkness requires a vast, deep cave system with liquid water in which to live most of her life with access to the surface, coexistence with her sentries, the Fury, as well as a large biodiversity of surface dwelling animals to provide them with food. It is a unique and specific arrangement. I would imagine the species is quite rare, with perhaps as few as 1000 individuals. Its time on this planet will be limited, if the ice sheets progress and envelope the planet completely.”

Jim frowned, “It’s going to die out anyway?”

“Perhaps, in time,” Spock looked at him, “Perhaps not. Such is the nature of nearly all species, Captain. All planets endure extreme changes, and species evolve and become extinct in accordance with each. The vast majority of all life exists for very brief periods in the universe, excepting those species, like us, which are sapient and capable of leaving their original planets to settle elsewhere. Even then, some may still become endangered through other means.”

Jim grimaced again, his guilt only compounded as he gazed off into the forest. 

Spock was one of those endangered species. There were just over 11,000 Vulcans still alive in the entire galaxy. Hardly more than the number of Humans who had been completely annihilated from the colony of Bono Fortuno.

His job as Captain was to deal with sapient beings, making first contacts, with diplomacy and negotiation and ceremony. He regularly went down to explore a new planet, enjoying the interesting scenery and strange flowers and alien animals, but he knew it wasn’t his area of expertise. He’d tested out of a lot of the sciences when he’d accelerated his timeline, so he knew he missed a lot of this stuff. But science was Spock’s job—to theorize and study these animals and environments, the ones they couldn’t speak with, that existed always in the present, living simple, wild lives. And even if they couldn’t communicate with them, it didn’t mean they weren’t real or important, for whatever short blip in the grand scale of space and time they occupied.

“Are you all right, Captain?” asked Spock.

“Fine,” Jim muttered evasively, “I’m fine.”

“Do you wish to continue the game?”

“No,” he shook his head, toppling his king though he’d only played one move.

“What is wrong?” Spock persisted, “You appear to be distressed.”

Jim sighed, “Just…I feel even worse now. The Darkness, the Fury, all your theories. It just seems like you’re right. Like this whole place has evolved around the dragon’s existence.”

“Perhaps. It may well be that the Darkness is the keystone species within this ecosystem. The one animal whose existence affects and stabilizes the lives of all others.”

“And I killed its baby, or its mate, whichever. For no other reason than it was in my swimming hole and I didn’t like it,” he muttered, frowning, “It belongs here, on this planet, and we don’t.”

Spock lifted his eyebrows, gathering the chess pieces into their basket. “That is an apt description of the situation, Captain.”

Jim glowered over at him. “You could just go ahead and say ‘I told you so’.”

“No,” his First said, “I do not believe that is necessary.”


	13. Chapter 13

Jim watched as Spock chopped a bunch of tubers, scooped them into the pot, and then began chopping on heaping pile of mushrooms.

He wrinkled his nose. It felt like they ate this same meal every other day. He hated mushrooms. He was tired of mushroom and vegetable stew, marshmallow gourds and dry biscuits. What he wouldn’t give for a big delicious cheeseburger and fries. He’d gone ages without any protein, wasting far too much of it on the stupid assholefish with nothing to show for it. He’d spent the last two days waiting on game trails with his snare set, back to his old tried and true methods, and hadn’t even caught a scrawny treehopper. 

His scratches and scrapes from the assholefish fight were still itchy, though mostly healed, all except for the deeper one on the inside of his thigh. That one just didn’t want to close. The second day afterwards, it had begun oozing a sort of watery fluid until he’d bandaged it up under his pants. Bandages that needed changing again. 

He got up, went into the cave to gather a few supplies he’d stashed while Spock was busy, tucked them into his pocket, and strode out towards the woods.

“Where are you going?”

“Nowhere,” he said, automatically defensive. He cleared his throat, casually amending, “Just to the toilet.”

“Do not go far, the stew will be edible in six minutes,” Spock dumped a ton of the mushrooms in, chopped finely enough that he couldn’t fish them out or push them aside in his bowl.

“Great,” he answered with clenched teeth, “I’m starving.” He headed off into the forest, looking back once or twice to be sure Spock wasn’t watching after him.

Glancing cautiously around once he was out of sightline of the camp, he took his pants down and gingerly sat on a tree root to unwrap the old bandaging from his thigh and peer at the wound. Now it looked like the cut had stopped seeping and had finally closed up, which had to be good, right? It felt warm and kind of firm, and it twinged a bit as he put weight on it and walked, but that wasn’t a big deal. He’d dealt with far worse injuries plenty of times. Surely it would just heal up on its own now.

He didn’t bother to rewrap it this time, but he smeared it with a thick smudge of the salve from the medkit for good measure. The stuff had healed all the rest of their minor wounds, even the mortimanges’ bites early on, so it had to be good stuff. He finished up, rinsed off the old bandaging in the river and hung it from a branch to dry and be retrieved later on, and went back to the camp, arriving in time for Spock to dole out an extra large serving of stew into his bowl.

“You indicated you were feeling malnourished,” Spock said of the serving size.

Jim sighed, picked up his wooden spoon, and ate. 

The next few days gave him more of the same frustrating, unproductive hunts. He’d set a snare and spend hours watching and waiting, but caught nothing. He would have figured the animals would have forgotten his usual spots after last couple months concentrating on the assholefish, but nothing was tripping his snares. He couldn’t figure it out, getting more and more annoyed as three, four, five days wore on without a single animal coming by. He knew sometimes hunting could be like this, but it was aggravating when he really needed the protein.

On top of it all, he and Spock had been generally cool toward each other ever since the day of the assholefish fight. He knew Spock had seen something in his head when he’d touched him, he had to have seen something, and Jim hated that. Of all the things he wanted to keep to himself about Tarsus, and all the shit that still haunted him from back then, that was by far the worst. He’d shot himself in the foot, opening up to Spock about it in the first place. He’d barely even told Bones any of the shit he’d told Spock about Tarsus. Every time he caught Spock looking at him too long, he knew it was because he had to know what he’d done.

He ended up hiking a bit farther out of his usual range one day to find a new trail he hadn’t hunted on before. After setting up the snare, he found a scrubby bush to crouch behind, settling in to wait. The hours drew on, and the ache in his leg spread to his back and shoulders from hunching over. 

Then, at long last, a pair of pig-things came snuffling along the trail. He ducked down further behind his cover as they slowed to root around near the crushed up nuts he’d set out. He rarely used nuts for bait, since he wasn’t really supposed to handle them for fear of a reaction, and Spock would do that thing he did whenever he thought Jim had done something unnecessarily dangerous, reprimanding him like he was nine years old and too stupid to look after himself. He wasn’t that much of a dumbass—his allergic reactions were no joke, and he actually did try to avoid them as much as possible. He’d been careful not to touch the nuts, doling them out of a pouch and crushing them up with a rock to spread the scent, figuring maybe he just needed a more enticing lure than berries or fruit.

He watched and waited anxiously, holding his breath as the larger of the two pawed at the bait inside of his snare. Finally, with a burst of movement, his trap sprang, catching the animal by a foot. The other pig-thing dashed off, squealing as Jim jumped from his hiding place to move in and finish the job.

Pausing afterwards to catch his breath, he sat beside the expired animal, shaking off the memory of his last kill, and the still lingering memory of the first. Fuck, he didn’t want this to keep coming up every time he needed a meal these days. _It’s just getting food. I’m sorry for this, thank you for giving me your life_ , he thought, though it felt like a false prayer, a shameful oath that didn’t matter to the dead one way or the other. He tried to remember Spock’s words, about how life was a circle and it was logical for him to do this. It had all been for survival, from that first kill to this one. He wanted to live. 

Once he’d calmed his thoughts, he turned to the work ahead. Already he was tired, and his leg ached. _I’m getting too old for this shit_ , he supposed. Sometimes long days in the chair on the Bridge made him ache too. Whether he moved or sat still, it felt like he was aching lately.

Hunting outside of his usual territory had the unfortunate downside of having to move the heavy carcass a long way. He preferred to do his butchery downriver of the pool, so the running water would carry all the mess away for scavengers to clean up far from their territory. Which meant he’d have to drag his kill for a good two kilometers or so back to the river.

This pig-thing felt like it weighed 20 kilos larger than they averaged, so by the time he’d reached the river and got the carcass butchered and cleaned, his thigh was fucking throbbing, and the day’s work was far from finished. He still he had to get it another kilometer back uphill to their camp. Every ten meters, he had to stop to catch his breath and wipe the sweat from his brow. His heart felt like it was beating too fast with the exertion and his head was starting to ache along with the rest of him.

Spock had walked past him once, presumably to wash an armful of their wooden implements at the river, and then again, heading back to the camp, fully ignoring his grunting and panting captain along the way.

“Hey, don’t mind me,” he said sarcastically, as his commander passed him up, “It’s fine, nothing to see here.”

Spock paused and turned back to him, “I am aware of you, Captain. You are neither invisible nor silent.”

“Yeah, great, thanks for noticing,” Jim dropped the carcass to lean on his knees and catch his breath again.

“Is there something you require?” Spock asked.

“No, nothing at all,” Jim shook his head, “Just, you know, you’re eight times stronger than I am and you’re sauntering by doing the dishes while I work my ass off moving this thing.”

“Vulcans are three times stronger than Humans, on average,” he corrected, looking down at the dead animal. “We have both assumed tasks in order to maintain the functionality of our camp. In the past eight Standard months, you have given no complaint at performing those tasks to which you have personally assigned yourself. We have discussed my beliefs on the matter.”

“I’m not asking you to do the dirty work, but it wouldn’t kill you to help me move an animal once its dead and butchered, would it?” Jim retorted.

“It would not kill me,” answered Spock, “As I have stated previously, I would prefer not to handle a carcass as a food product. The camp is not far, you will arrive there shortly.”

“Yeah, well, maybe if I had help it wouldn’t take as long,” Jim sniped. “What if we had other crew with us out here, huh? What if I had to make sure a bunch of other people had food to eat?”

“You do not, therefore the argument is invalid.”

“The argument?” Jim scoffed incredulously, “This isn’t an argument, Spock.”

“Then you have no logical reason to be resentful,” the Vulcan countered. 

“I’m not resentful,” Jim growled, “I’m tired, I have a headache, and I still need to get this fucking thing cut up and smoking before I can take a goddamn break.”

“It would then behoove you to do so, Captain, so that you may get adequate rest.” With that, Spock walked on, leaving Jim to drag his kill the rest of the way.

When Jim did finally arrive at their camp and dropped the carcass by the fire, Spock was already there, rubbing oil into their wooden implements.

Scowling, Jim spitted a large portion of the tail meat over the fire for his evening meal, then pulled over his makeshift drying rack, and set to work cutting the rest into strips and draping them on the rack to slow smoke over the fire. It took a lot of time, and usually needed to be watched to keep the treeweasels or other opportunists from stealing. He was tired and annoyed and goddamn hungry, and his leg hurt like hell because that stupid cut had reopened again. He could feel it seeping into the fabric of his pants, but he didn’t have the time or inclination to go deal with it. 

He paused the work only to eat his cooked portion without bothering to be polite about it. He just grabbed the whole hunk with his hands to eat it off the bone like barbecued ribs instead of cutting it into bite-sized pieces, and sucked the dripping juices from his fingers. If Spock was disgusted by his bad manners, he didn’t really give a shit.

With evening set in, and Jim went inside to tug his thermal shirt on and grab a blanket, pulling it tight around his shoulders. The mountain breeze felt cold now that the sun had gone down and left the two partially lit moons on watch. It would be a long, chilly night, literally and figuratively. He and Spock hadn’t spoken a word since their little spat earlier, and he would have to stay awake all night to keep watch over the smoker. He continued his work silently, cutting up the remainder of the carcass until it was all processed and smoking over the fire. He wrapped the remaining bones up in the hide, which he would ordinarily take down to the treefall area to scatter for the scavengers, but he just didn’t have the energy.

“Are you feeling better, now that you have eaten?” Spock condescended to ask.

“Fine,” Jim retorted shortly. In reality, the meat now felt heavy in his stomach, and his headache had not abated, pounding dully between his temples. 

“You are being deceptive,” said Spock.

“Am I?” Jim snapped, his anger at the way the last week had gone finally unleashing, “Am I, Mister I Can’t Tell A Lie, but lies all the time? Am I being deceptive, Spock?”

“Yes,” the commander responded, “You are clearly upset. Please explain. I do not wish for us to remain in a state of animosity.”

Jim seethed, finally letting it out. “What did you see in my head? Huh?”

Spock frowned, “I do not understand your meaning.”

“Bullshit. When I killed the fucking assholefish, _you saw_ , didn’t you,” he accused, pointing a finger at his head, “You touched me and got a freaky look up in my fucked-up brain.” 

The Vulcan’s expression carefully blanked. “I saw nothing in your mind, Captain. I was shielding, as always.”

“You’re a liar,” Jim scowled, “You saw.”

Spock’s face hardened, “Vulcans do not lie.”

“You do,” Jim flung back at him, “You wanna know how I know? ‘Cause you’re not a real Vulcan. You’re Half-Human too and Humans are all fucking liars. You’re just a lying mongrel of a—”

“Captain, cease this insult at once,” Spock said stiffly. 

“What are you gonna do? You gonna call my mom?” he sneered. “Pissed you off, huh? You mad, Spocko?”

“You are being deliberately unkind, which is entirely out of your character,” Spock rose from his seat, lifting a hand toward him with concern, “You have been irritable for days. What is wrong?”

Jim flinched away from him. “Get the fuck away from me,” he spat, “Don’t touch me. Nothing’s wrong, I’m tired and cold and I’ve had a shit time hunting lately.”

“You are perspiring,” said Spock, “Are you feeling unwell?”

“Said I’m fucking fine, didn’t I? I’m not sweating, it’s too cold to sweat. It’s just a headache. Just leave me alone.”

“As we currently occupy the same campsite, I am not inclined to do so,” Spock sat down again, watching Jim a little too closely for his comfort, “The ambient temperature is comfortable for me, Captain, which as you have repeatedly stated is too warm for you. You have overexerted yourself. Perhaps you should lie down and rest.”

“Perhaps I shall,” Jim snottily parroted his high-and-mighty speech, lumbering up and flapping the blanket around him. “You can stay out here being a dick.”

Spock furrowed his brows, “As I do not require sleep, I will meditate through the night.”

“Fine. Watch my meat while you’re at it.”

Jim yanked the cave door shut and curled up on the entirety of the pallet, having couched his Vulcan for the night, and pulled all of the blankets tightly around himself.

 

“Captain, are you awake?”

Jim hadn’t been until that moment. He cracked his eyes at the too-loud voice, squeezing them tightly shut again at the violently bright light from the doorway. “Is it snowing?”

“It is not,” Spock told him, “The sun is shining. It is nearly midday.”

He shivered, “I’m so cold.”

“I will light the interior fire,” said Spock, setting a cup beside him. “You must drink, you have been asleep for some time. Are you well?”

“I dunno,” Jim poked a hand out of his pile of blankets to grab the cup and lifted his head up as much as he could to awkwardly drink it. His hand shook and slopped some of the water on the blankets. Something was burrowing tunnels through his skull, and he moaned, “My head really hurts.”

“Would you like an analgesic hypospray?”

“Mm-hm,” Jim mumbled, putting his leaden head down again. He tried to roll over on his back, but his leg shot up and down with pain, it hurt too much to move. “Will you ask Bones to come to my quarters?”

“Dr. McCoy is not here, Captain.” 

Jim felt a hypo press gently to his neck and discharge, and promptly passed out.

 

He was awake again and really didn’t want to be. Someone was calling. It was too loud in his eyes, too thick in his mouth. The voice was filling the tunnels in his head with echoes and leaking out his tears.

“Captain, are you conscious?”

“Ouch,” he groaned, squeezing his eyes shut. The brightness pierced through them and twisted tightly into his spine. He’d rather be dead than in this much pain. Something cold burned his face and he tried to push it away, “Stop it. Go away. I’m not hungry.”

“You are extremely feverish.”

The brightness was so much, it squeezed his bones. Bones. Bones would come soon and stab him asleep. “He’ll be here soon to make me dead. Don’t let him wait, it hurts so much.”

“Captain, I do not understand. Where does it hurt?”

“It’s okay, Spock. I’ve been there before, remember? I know the way,” he shivered violently. “Cut it out. Stop shaking the walls. I just wanna go.”

“Captain,” said Spock, “It is imperative that you remain awake.”

“‘M not awake. My teeth are broken. It’ll be over soon enough. I’m going to go.”

“Captain. Captain, you cannot go, you must not,” Spock’s voice seemed to fade away and go underwater. “Captain? Jim!”


	14. Chapter 14

_“Today, we gather to celebrate the lives, and to mourn the passing of two of Starfleet’s finest officers. One, the youngest graduate ever to be given the captain’s chair, and the other, the first of his species to enter Starfleet. Both fiercely loyal to the Federation, both decorated with our highest medals of honor and service, both driven by the mission we hold dear: to explore new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.”_

“How dare you,” Uhura glared at Komack’s face on the holoscreens as he spoke from the steps of Starfleet Headquarters, with the rest of the Admiralty and stills of Kirk and Spock projected behind him against the HQ building. “You sniveling, jealous little roach of a man.”

The command team of the USS _Enterprise_ sat tucked into a corner table at Cochrane’s, its usually lively crowd subdued and quiet as the funerary service played on the holoscreens above the bar. The fact that more than a few servicemen were seated at its tables and counters instead of at the service itself showed that they were not the only ones in the ranks who didn’t agree with the Admiralty’s decision. Formally declaring the status of the flagship’s command team changed from ‘Missing In Action’ to ‘Presumed Dead’ had been met with shock from all sides.

For months, they had networked with other officers to rally support for taking a small fleet back to Velarusa IV. Though Jim was younger than almost any other captain by a decade or more, he and his crew had earned the respect of several of their contemporaries over the years. While some shared the Admiralty’s concern with antagonizing both the Romulans and Klingons by skimming their borders again, others agreed it was wrong to leave any crewman behind if there was any possibility they had survived. Even some flag officers within the lower Admiralty, like Commodore Paris, were sympathetic. Many lower ranking crewmen also agreed; no one would want to be left stranded for this long. If the captain and commander of the flagship had been left for dead, how could anyone else count on being rescued from a similar situation?

But their efforts had not gone unnoticed. With this elaborate funeral service, complete with as much pomp as they could muster was insult on top of injury, and showed the Admiralty’s official, public, and final position on the matter. Stirring up dissent was not going to be tolerated.

As it was, the _Enterprise_ was currently in Spacedock at Luna and the crew was grounded. The official reason was for minor refits, but the crew knew otherwise. Sulu, Uhura, McCoy and the rest of the senior officers had declined requests to speak at the funeral. Appearance at the service had been mandatory for all localized servicemen and for _Enterprise_ officers in particular. None were in attendance.

All of them expected to be called into headquarters to be reprimanded for their absence. All of them were prepared to take their punishment. Many of their crew had opted to use their leave to travel to hometowns away from San Francisco, and there were a considerable number of empty chairs at the service shown on the holofeed. It wasn’t only the _Enterprise_ crew who disagreed with this charade.

“Holy shit, is that…?” Sulu gaped at the screen as it panned over the front row of the audience, looking like he’d seen a ghost.

“That’s Sam,” growled McCoy, “Jim’s brother. Goddamn bastards. You know they’d have lied to him through their teeth to get him to bring his family all the way from Deneva for this dog and pony show, just to make it seem like the family condones it. I should call Winona, she’s gonna want to get in touch with him.”

“Does she buy this shit?”

“I doubt it. She and Jim…they don’t talk much, but I can’t imagine she'd swallow this any more than we do. But she’s deployed, the _Endeavor’s_ weeks away from Earth right now. They didn’t even give her a chance to attend her own son’s funeral.”

“What about Spock’s dad?”

“Vulcans grieve in different ways,” Uhura shook her head, “But I can’t imagine Sarek accepts this either. It isn’t logical to declare someone dead without any evidence.”

A cadet entered the bar and approached their table, the red uniform standing out against white skin and black markings, as she was the only one of her species to wear it. “Jaylah!” Uhura exclaimed, standing to give her a hug, “How are you?”

“I am pissed off,” she answered bluntly.

“You’re in fine company then, sweetheart,” said McCoy, pulling up an empty chair from a nearby table for her to join them.

“I bring to show you this,” she produced a padd, which showed holos of Jim and Spock with a bold headline proclaiming, _Starfleet gave up on them. Will you?_ and reiterating what all of them had been saying in debriefs for months—how they knew their commanding officers could survive, and how they owed them to go back.

“You wrote this?” asked Uhura.

“Yes,” she said, “I will send tonight on Academy directory listing.”

“You know you’ll probably get expelled for this?” McCoy leaned over to tell her.

“It will be encrypted and untraceable, Leonard Bones,” Jaylah’s sharp golden eyes clipped to him. “But I do not care if I am caught. James T and Mister Spock would tell me to do it anyway, so I am doing it anyway.”

“That’s our feisty braw lass!” Scotty beamed at her proudly. 

“This funeral, it does not look good for the Admiralty, I think,” mused Chekov, “The Captain and Commander Spock have been the face of recruitment campaigns since Nero. Most of the cadets at the Academy now cite them as reason for joining. There is no one else so famous in Starfleet, except for you, Hikaru.”

“Yes, this is true,” Jaylah agreed. “Many people I know say this.”

“The optics are terrible,” Uhura shook her head, crossing her arms, “They just think it’s more important to keep us in line, but I don’t think that’s quite how it’ll play out publicly.”

“No one wants to bury their heroes,” muttered McCoy.

“Maybe Jaylah’s right,” Sulu said, his jaw setting with determination. “The Admiralty doesn’t want to listen to us. Maybe it’s time we go over their heads.”

Uhura frowned, “To the Fed Council?”

“To the public. To the press.”

“The press has already spun it with all kinds of conspiracy theories,” she said, “So much so that they’ve had to put public relations on air to try to dispel them.”

“And it hasn’t really worked, has it?” said McCoy, “That’s why they’ve resorted to burying them with a big to-do like this.”

“Then we use it to our advantage,” Sulu said, “I guarantee the press will have noticed the crew of the _Enterprise_ is missing from our own command’s funeral. They’re going to ask us why.”

“Then we tell them why,” growled McCoy. “Jim and Spock aren’t dead, and we know it.”

“Hang on a minute, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Scotty stopped him, “I’m all for hangin’ the Admiralty in the press, but remember, our Silver Lady is docked up there without us. If we’re ever to get back to that planet, we’ll be needin’ her back, so don’t go popping off before we’re cleared back aboard.”

“Sulu’s right,” Uhura said, “This is is less about public sentiment than it is about shutting us up. The Admiralty’s doing this to stop dissent from growing in the ranks specifically; they know they’re starting to lose control. We have to keep it going, get even more people on our side. Eventually there will be a tipping point. Starfleet can’t operate without its officers and crews.”

“Not so loud though, leannan,” Scotty muttered quietly, glancing around uncomfortably, “You’re talking mutiny in a Fleet pub, ya ken?”

“If any of these people agreed with the Admiralty, they’d be at the funeral,” she retorted, gesturing to the other patrons around them.

“We can’t talk to the press openly, but civilians can,” mused McCoy, “Jim’s got a lot of friends…and even more fans. The more of them start making noise, the more sentiments inside might turn. The more public stink is made, the more visible our cause stays.”

“The Admiralty wants this funeral to be the end of it,” said Uhura, “We can’t let it go away.”

“It wasn’t just the Captain and the Commander. There were six other officers down there with them, and the Admiralty’s not even mentioning them,” put in Hendorff quietly, “Leahey and Ramirez are in Spock’s department. Mornay, Comrie, and Gu’on are mine.”

“And Gib is mine,” grumbled McCoy.

“We need to get in touch with their families, keep them on our side. We might be Redshirts, but we never go down without a fight,” he finished.

“Do it,” Sulu nodded at that, “Right now, we’re gonna need to deal with the press. They’ll be swarming the whole HQ area for the next few days, looking for a soundbite. Let’s make sure we’re unified in what we’re going to say.”

“What can we say without compromising ourselves?” asked Scotty. “Openly going against the Admiralty will mean court-martial and demotion, if not discharge. We’ll all be reprimanded just for missing this farce.”

“We say that the Admiralty made their decision. We say we serve the Federation, whether we agree with our superiors or not,” Uhura said firmly, “That statement, coupled with us obviously not being at the funeral today? The implication that we believe our guys are still alive is there without being spoken outright.”

“She’s right. We can’t be punished by implication alone,” nodded Sulu, with a firm look around the table, “If you don’t think you can say anything publicly, then keep your mouths shut. Otherwise, stick to the script. Don’t compromise yourselves, or the rest of us. We need everybody on the same page.”

“Aye, alright,” Scotty drained the last of his glass. “That’s me done, then. I want to go over those refit logs, see if they’re givin’ us anything worthwhile and what I’ve got to rejigger.”

“I’ll go with you,” Uhura also stood, accepting as Scotty helped her into her coat, “Jaylah, you’re not on a crew yet. If you think you can build support anonymously, go ahead with your pamphleting, do what you need to do at the Academy. But be careful, don’t do anything overt just yet. We’ll be in touch.”

They walked out, McCoy lifting an eyebrow and exchanging a look with Sulu at the presence of Scotty’s hand low on Uhura’s back, escorting her out. Hendorff gruffly excused himself as well, offering a casual salute to Sulu. As Jaylah collected her padd and said goodbye, it left McCoy, Chekov and Sulu huddled at the table, watching the funeral service come to a close.

“You are certain about this, yes?” Chekov asked. “To go against the Admiralty…it is risky.”

Sulu lifted his shoulders with a frown, “I’m not certain of much anymore, except that I wouldn’t want it to be me—left behind and buried with my family lied to like that. We have to keep trying.”

“If it all goes tits up, it might mean your chair,” McCoy warned.

“Yeah, it might,” Sulu nodded, “But it’s not my chair. It’s Jim’s, and he should have it back.”

**Author's Note:**

> I really appreciate all your kudos and comments! Please subscribe to get chapter updates emailed to you!


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